Reliance Jio is planning to launch a 5G smartphone for less than Rs 5,000 and is estimating to reduce the price to Rs 2,500-3,000 a unit as operations scale, reported PTI. At present, 5G smartphones in India start from Rs 27,000.
According to a company official, Jio will be targeting the 5G smartphone to its current 20-30 crore 2G mobile phone user based. Jio was also the first company in India to launch free 4G mobile phones in India for a refundable deposit fo Rs 1,500.
Unlike its competition, burdened with legacy 2G and 3G networks, Jio has claimed many times that its current 4G technology is ready to advance to 5G, whenever the country’s telecom climate is prepared to make the move.
This will also ensure other telcos like Airtel and Vodafone-Idea get their networks in place, especially if the auction of spectrum is done sometime in mid-2020. As informed by Aruna Sundararajan, Telecom Secretary, “the government expects to complete processes for 5G spectrum auction by August and the services will be rolled out by 2020.”
At 43rd Annual General meeting, Reliance Industries Chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani had asserted to make India "2G-mukt" (free of 2G connections).
Ambani announced that Google will be a strategic partner in Jio Platforms. He also announced that Reliance Jio has also partnered up with Facebook as a premium strategic partner.
Under the strategic partnership, Google will invest Rs 33,737 crore for a 7.7 percent stake in Jio Platforms, the Reliance Industries head said at the firm's AGM, adding that the target of capital raise for Jio Platforms is complete with the onboarding of Google.
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