Reliance Jio’s nationwide 5G buildout in India, which began in October 2022, is ahead of schedule with 65 percent of the scope completed and more than 90 percent of the major towns covered by 5G signals, Kiran Thomas, President, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited said on a recent earnings call. Jio has deployed 115,000 5G sites, which translates to nearly 700,000 5G cells, he said.
“So, all in all, we are on track to complete what is going to be the fastest 5G rollout anywhere in the world, creating coverage for a large country like India within just over a year,” Thomas said.
Jio is deploying a standalone 5G network architecture. Network slicing allows the carrier to provide a dedicated network, called AirFiber, for home broadband activity.
“So, in a way, we have created two lanes in our 5G highway, one dedicated for the home rollout and one still continuing to serve our 5G mobile customers,” Thomas said.
Monthly data traffic exceeded 11 exabytes for the quarter. Data consumption was up 48.3 percent year over year and continues to grow every quarter, according to Anshuman Thakur, Head of Strategy, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited. Per capita data consumption increased 20 percent year over year to 25 GB per user per month.
“Data traffic, if you look at the trends, has been growing at a faster pace every quarter,” Thakur said. “And we’re continuing to build capacity in the network through the 5G expansion, so we are well prepared for data traffic growing much more in the quarters to come.”
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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