Jio claimed it achieved the fastest 5G rollout globally
Indian operator Reliance Jio Infocomm has completed the rollout of 5G technology in India last month, local press reported, citing the company’s chairman, Mukesh Ambani.
During a presentation at the Tamil Nadu Global Investors Meet 2024, the executive noted that Jio’s 5G network currently reaches all towns and cities across India.
He also claimed that the telco achieved the fastest 5G rollout globally. Despite the claim, the company’s official website still shows outdated figures, stating 5G availability in 7,764 towns and cities.
Reliance Jio Infocomm has been rapidly expanding its 5G network using Standalone (SA) architecture since October 2022.
Reliance Jio had previously secured a mix of wireless spectrum for 5G across the 700 MHz, 3.5 GHz and 26 GHz bands. Jio is the only Indian operator with spectrum in the 700 MHz band.
In September 2023, local press reports confirmed that Reliance Jio Infocomm was seeking to raise up to $2 billion in loans with French bank BNP Paribas as lead arranger of the initiative that will help fund the purchase of 5G network gear from Swedish vendor Ericsson.
Also, Reliance Jio Infocomm’s 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) offering, dubbed JioAirFiber, is already commercially available in 514 cities in 25 states across India.
JioAirFiber is available in these states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Kerala, Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Maharashtra, Odisha, Nagaland, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Tripura, Telangana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
The telco had announced the launch of its 5G FWA service in eight cities across the country in September.
Reliance Jio Infocomm is currently working with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay to launch an indigenous artificial intelligence (AI) model, which will be called ‘Bharat GPT’.
According to recent reports, Reliance Jio is working with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay, to develop a generative pre-trained language model-based solutions for key business verticals such as telecom and retail.
Ambani also highlighted that AI will transform every area of products and services. “We are working very hard to launch AI not only as a vertical inside our organization, but also horizontally across all our sectors,” he said.
