Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries says it's built its own 5G kit and hopes to sell to all comers
- Reference: 1594967291
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/07/17/reliance_jio_to_sell_5g/
- Source link:
At its annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, chairman, Mukesh Ambani, said that the group's telecoms unit had developed a "complete 5G solution from scratch... using 100 per cent homegrown technologies and solutions."
Customer number one will be Jio Platforms, the Reliance-owned carrier that has [1]recently attracted investment from Google, Intel, Facebook and many others .
"Because of Jio's converged, all-IP network architecture, we can easily upgrade our 4G network to 5G," said Ambani, adding that the solution could be deployed as early as next year.
"Once Jio's 5G is proven at India-scale, Jio Platforms would be well positioned to be an exporter of 5G solutions to other telecom operators globally, as a complete managed service."
So far it is unclear whether Jio plans to build the actual infrastructure or offer a software stack that integrates with hardware from other players. In the case of the latter, several new players have entered the field, including [2]HPE and Microsoft, both of which believe they can challenge telco-centric companies' grip on the industry.
Just what Reliance has built was not discussed. If the company has indeed built the many pieces of hardware and software required for a complete network it is a substantial achievement given other vendors to have done so have long experience building telco-grade networking kit. Even kit to upgrade other 4G networks will be a fine score.
Just building Jio Platforms' network will be a challenge. But if anyone can do it, it would be Ambani. Reliance Jio made its name in India by shelling out $35bn to build the country's first all-4G network using Samsung kit. The company then offered a slew of free calls and cheap data deals that offered buyers a strong alternative. Today it is India's biggest telecom operator, accounting for over 380m users, or about a third of the total market.
The success of those efforts is reflected in the recent $20bn investment splurge on the carrier.
It's a fine time to offer 5G infrastructure as mobile carriers everywhere are already adopting the new standard or planning new builds. They're doing so as trade tensions mean many carriers are less likely to shop with Huawei . India, too, is currently in the midst of a big self-sufficiency drive and Ambani said the new range is offered as an embodiment of the policy.
We'll learn more about what Reliance has created in early 2021 when India's India's 5G trials commence. That's later than the planned April 2020 start date, which was pushed back after local telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone argued that India's government had priced spectrum too high for them to plan new networks. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/16/google_invests_in_jio_platforms/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/10/hpe_to_push_into_5g/
[3] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Home buying
Cost. Living expenses are higher in the UK, so wages are higher too by necessity.
There’s little detail here - 5G was designed to move away from hardware and towards software as far as is reasonably practical. You can deploy a 5G core (SA or NSA) without owning any hardware (granted, your Azure/AWS bills will be something to behold!). It’s only the RAN side where you need specialist equipment. The radio tech for 5G is crazy. Even then, a significant portion of the RAN functions can be performed in software.
These folk may well be talking about a software only core offering. If that’s the case I don’t see how the UK could ever hope to compete. India has a large number of STEM graduates in a culture that values education, and significantly lower wages than the UK. The UK *could* produce a product, but it wouldn’t sell.
Great disruptor
Will be glad if Reliance can pull this off . They can then sell it to UK Telcos who are still bickering over 5G and Huawei, seeking govt. subsidies.
Interesting
Jio use Samsung for 4G. So a bolt on to that for non stand alone, or something completely new in stand alone?
The latter is easier, but rather less useful at present.
Anyone taking bets on when this is branded a security risk?
Home buying
Is there a valid reason, that here in the west, we have a major problem building our own kit ? Have we lost our know-how is is there something else afoot ?