Reliance Jio could go it alone for 5G using in-house tech

Disruptive Indian telco Reliance Jio has reportedly developed its own 5G technology, news which the vendor ecosystem will surely meet with a raised eyebrow. The company claims to have designed its own 5G hardware, which could ultimately be manufactured in India.

 

“We are more scalable than these vendors and are fully automated since we have our own cloud-native platform,” one insider said. “In 5G, we will totally be self-sufficient. We can give the design, layouts and board support packages to third-party manufacturers to have our gear made,” said an unnamed senior executive to The Economic Times.

 

If true, this will be a pretty astonishing technical feat, making them very likely the world’s first mobile operator to attempt 5G on their own.

 

However, the vendors are sure to argue that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should and to a certain extent they are right – Jio’s in-house tech cannot hope to match to the technical might of vendors like Huawei and Ericsson. These third-party vendors have decades of experience and R&D budgets which very few, if any, operators can hope to match; if creating a competitive product will be a struggle, then maintaining that level of competition will be next to impossible.

 

But building your own end-to-end 5G solutions is, nonetheless, a pretty attractive proposition. The potential savings from using in-house tech are enormous, as well as allowing complete freedom for network customisation. 

 

“Our own technology will help us commercially as well as offer flexibility. We can customise use cases and tailor it to India-specific needs,” the executive said.

 

It also does away with issues of security thrown up by the use of third parties – this could save Jio from some nasty headaches over Huawei, for example, if India does take the unlikely course of yielding to US pressure to ban the Chinese vendor. 

 

Only Mukesh Ambani’s Jio could attempt such an audacious move, but the reality of operators moving to challenge vendors hardware domination on a larger scale may not be so far away. As software begins to play a more important role in network infrastructure, including the rise of software-defined networks and OpenRAN initiatives, the need for vast amounts of specialist hardware appears to be diminishing.

 

Jio is now reportedly seeking approval for 5G trials using its own technology, the results of which the vendors will presumably watch with bated breath.

 

 

 

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