Back in 2016, Reliance Jio offered free 4g services to everyone in India for almost half a year and within a month had 16 crore Jio users. Now in 2020 at the Indian mobile congress, Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of Reliance says that they are already working on the development of 5g and will be able to release in the second half of 2021. He also mentions about how India is growing digitally and how his efforts of bringing affordable 5g will help India's digital technology get better.
Jio had already started testing 5g from July 2020 and is now working with companies like Qualcomm and Samsung to develop it. By October 2020 Jio had talked about how it had developed 5g Radio Access Network (RAN) to further test the 5g network. Mr. Ambani addressed to the Prime Minister that the 5g service would be a "testimony" to the "self-reliant India" program and he would need some help to develop and provide this next generation network as soon as possible.
Along with introduction to 5g, Mr. Ambani talks about 3 more things.
- He first talks about how in India there are around 30 crore people who are still stuck using 2g network because they cannot afford a better smartphone. "Urgent policy steps are needed to ensure that these under privileged people have an affordable smart phone" says Mr. Ambani.
- He then talks about the Jio platform and how it has built really good artificial intelligence, cloud computing big data, machine learning etc.
- Finally he talks about how the demand for digital hardware is going to grow and how leading global companies coming to India will reduce the cost of importing the parts.
If Jio succeeds in its plans to release 5g next year, then it would be a proud moment for India by joining the 5g community. Jio had already been providing 4g much cheaper than any other mobile networks outside of India but now people are wondering if they will do the same with 5g. Even though Mr. Ambani says that they'll provide it in an affordable range, he did not mention how much it would be. 5th generation network can be as much as 10 times faster than the 4g we already have. This depends on the placements of 5g network towers and how much range they have.
5g being released in India could be of great benefit for everyone as long as we use it well, But it can also have a downside. Teenagers who are already Indulged in online gaming will grow more. At the end of the day, it's up to the person, what he or she wants to do with this super fast mobile network. It surely will be better if Jio plans to make an affordable 5g phone too along with the 5g network.