Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has said that it has developed home-grown 5G Radio integrated with its 5G core network.
Jio Platforms Ltd, the digital arm of RIL reportedly plans to demonstrate its 5G capabilities in the coming months, albeit a commercial launch is expected only after the spectrum allocation, which the government has not yet definitively scheduled.
In a predictably upbeat statement within Reliance Industries Limited’s consolidated results for the quarter ended 31 December 2020, the company said that indigenously developed 5G radio integrated with Jio’s 5G core network and 5G smartphones had achieved over-the-air throughputs in excess of 1 Gbps. In-house Massive MIMO and indoor 5G small cells were said to be in advanced stages of development.
Also on the telecoms side of the massive RIL business, the company highlighted the success of the JioMeet platform and Reliance Jio’s bundled broadband offering for small-to-medium-sized businesses, the growth of the Jio pan-India IoT network and FTTH expansion.
But it’s 5G that will gain most of the attention of the technology press in the coming months, and Indian media outlets have noted that Jio Platforms and its wholly owned subsidiary Radisys Corporation recently partnered with Qualcomm to develop open and interoperable interface-compliant architecture-based 5G solutions with a virtualized RAN. The partnership is intended to fast-track the development and roll-out of indigenous 5G network infrastructure and services in India.
We’ll no doubt soon hear more. Mukesh Ambani, chairman of RIL, recently said that Reliance Jio was planning to launch 5G in the second half of 2021. The company is currently awaiting permission from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to test its 5G equipment.
