Mukesh Ambani urged the government to accelerate the rollout of fifth-generation telecommunications services.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani urged the government to accelerate the rollout of fifth-generation telecommunications services and to phase out outdated 2G technology led primarily by rivals, Bharti Airtel Ltd and Vodafone Idea Ltd.
“Up to 300 million mobile subscribers in India remain trapped in the 2G era,” said Ambani, Asia’s richest man and president of Reliance Industries Ltd., in a speech Tuesday at the India Mobile Congress. “I assure you that Jio will pioneer the 5G revolution in India in the second half of 2021.”
Ambani’s push for these policy measures will give Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. an unmatched advantage, which disrupted the sector in 2016 with an intense tariff war and is now the country’s leading wireless operator with more than 400 million subscribers. Being a new network, Jio does not have 2G cordless phone users, unlike its rivals Bharti and Vodafone Idea. Ambani has often said that Jio is 5G ready, while its competitors, in debt and at a loss, will find it harder to keep up with such investments.
Billionaire Sunil Mittal, who runs Bharti Airtel, said at the same industry event that India would be ready for 5G in the next two to three years.
‘Disadvantaged people’
Ambani also wants deeper penetration and easier availability of smartphones. “Urgent political measures are needed to ensure that these disadvantaged people have an affordable smartphone,” he said Tuesday.
The retail refining conglomerate established a broad alliance in July with Google, in which the Alphabet Inc. unit would invest $ 4.5 billion and cooperate on technology initiatives.
Reliance Industries had asked local suppliers to increase production capacity in India to 200 million smartphones in the next two years, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg in September. The group was in talks with domestic assemblers to make a version of its Jio phone that would run on Google’s Android and cost around 4,000 rupees ($ 54), people familiar with it said.
Shares of Reliance Industries rose 1.8% Tuesday in Mumbai, pushing its rise this year to 33%. Benchmark gas S&P BSE Sensex advanced nearly 11% compared.
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