Reliance Jio added 130 million new customers year-over-year (YoY) to increase its subscriber base to 410.2 million in March, the company said in its annual report. The telecom giant said the number of subscribers at the end of the June quarter stood at 419.9 million. The firm stated that it carried the highest volume of data globally, excluding China, with over 91 billion GB of data carried in 2021-22, an increase of 46 percent YoY and upwards of 7.5 billion GB a month. It has also completed active trials of 5G for use cases ranging from AR/ VR, low-latency cloud gaming, network slicing and multi-tenancy for video delivery, TV streaming, connected hospitals and industrial applications, it revealed in its annual report on Monday.
The country’s largest telecom player Jio has completed 5G coverage planning in the top 1,000 cities and conducted field trials of its home-grown 5G telecom gear, Reliance said in its annual report.
In the report, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) said that Jio took major steps during 2021-22 in getting ready for 5G with its 100 percent indigenous technology. The company was the biggest bidder in the recently-concluded 5G spectrum auction.
India’s biggest-ever auction of telecom spectrum that concluded on August 1 received a record Rs 1.5 lakh crore of bids, with Mukesh Ambani’s Jio cornering nearly half of all the airwaves sold.
“Jio’s 5G coverage planning has been completed in top 1,000 cities based on targeted customer consumption and revenue potential using heat maps, 3D maps and ray tracing technology,” the report released on August 7 said.
Reliance Jio was the top bidder, offering a cumulative bid of Rs 88,078 crore for 24,740MHz of airwaves across five bands capable of offering speeds about 10 times faster than 4G, lag-free connectivity, and can enable billions of connected devices to share data in real-time.
It has acquired the coveted 700 MHz spectrum, which can provide 6-10 km of signal range with one tower, and forms a good base for offering fifth generation (5G) services in all 22 circles or zones in the country.
Jio has also joined hands with the University of Oulu in Finland — the leader of the world’s first major 6G research programme — to accelerate research and standardisation in 6G.
According to the Department of Telecom, 5G technology is expected to deliver 10 times better download speed than that of 4G and up to three times greater spectrum efficiency.