Reliance Jio, Samsung join hands to bring 5G in India

Reliance Jio on Tuesday announced its collaboration with Samsung on the Infill and Growth (I&G) project with aimed at expanding its current network capacity as well as network coverage.

This joint project was established to upgrade the current LTE mobile communication services across India.

The project sets a high benchmark for LTE services in India through wider coverage, in-building penetration and the highest speeds, regardless of the user's location.

Utilising spectrum in the 850, 1800 and 2300 MHz bands, it will enable seamless indoor and outdoor coverage in dense urban areas. The project will also extend Jio's superiority in rural areas by expanding its reach to over 90 per cent of the population.

While India is still focusing on providing 4G services, this project aims to bring 5G connectivity to all users in the country.

"As Jio's end-to-end LTE solutions partner, it is a great pleasure for Samsung to contribute to Jio's tremendous success," Youngky Kim, president and head of networks business at Samsung Electronics, said.

"The massive deployment of over a million cells across India is especially remarkable. We will strive to create new paradigms for LTE-Advanced Pro and 5G by closely cooperating with Jio as a unified workforce," he added.

"We successfully achieved 100 million subscribers in 170 days, making us the fastest-growing company in the world, and the numbers continue to rapidly grow. It was possible because we introduced a truly effective LTE service, Pan-India. We are committed to bringing game-changing digital experiences to India with superior ecosystems, mobile content, all-IP networks and ongoing process innovations," said Jyotindra Thacker, president of Reliance Jio Infocomm.

Previously, Samsung provided the LTE core, base stations and solutions required for VoLTE services, as well as massive deployment services for establishing a nationwide network for Jio. The two companies have successfully established the world's largest greenfield LTE network.

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd and Samsung Electronics also announced that they have won the ''Best Mobile Innovation for Emerging Markets'' from Global Mobile Awards 2017 at Mobile World Congress 2017 for the digital movement that Jio, with support from Samsung, is bringing to India.

The two said the award is a global recognition of Jio and Samsung's ongoing effort in transforming India into a digitally empowered society by overcoming the country's digital divide. ''The two organisations have focused on reaching the power of communication and information with free voice and world's lowest data rates across towns and rural areas through the deployment of the world's largest greenfield LTE network in India,'' it said.

In addition, Jio has focused on enabling an easy access to digital life with customer-oriented applications and tariffs, and invitational offers.

Samsung said the LTE solutions provided to Jio were fully compliant with the 3GPP LTE standards, with their performances already verified and proven in other global markets.