In its annual report, released on Saturday, Reliance Industries revealed plans for its telco division Reliance Jio’s 5G rollout in India. Jio has finished planning its 5G coverage in the country’s top 1,000 cities and named 22 Indian cities that will receive its 5G network in the first phase, according to the report. Coverage planning focused on targeted client usage and revenue opportunities by using heat maps, 3D maps, and ray tracing.
The highest bidder at the recently concluded spectrum auction was Reliance Jio, which won the premium 700MHz band, which is alleged to provide better coverage with fewer towers. As part of the ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’ celebration, newly appointed Jio Chairman Akash Ambani also announced that services would be available throughout the country in August itself, hinting at an imminent launch.
5G spectrum auction bids totalled Rs 1.5 lakh crore or 71% of the available 5G spectrum. It was expected that Reliance Jio would be the top spender in the 5G spectrum auction. An amount of Rs 88,078 crore was paid for the telco’s purchase of 24,740MHz of 5G spectrum. Spectrum is now available in the 700MHz, 800MHz, 1,800MHz, 3,300MHz, and 26GHz bands.
At RIL’s quarterly results call last month, President Kiran Thomas said the telco had selected nine cities for the initial deployment. Among them are Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Jamnagar, Hyderabad, and Lucknow. The extensive 5G trials conducted in these cities were another reason for choosing these cities. In addition, Jio will use its own 5G stack for its 5G services.
