Reliance Jio, owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, has built nearly 1 lakh telecom towers, nearly five times as many as its closest rival, to roll out India's fastest and deepest 5 G telecom network and offer ultra-high speed internet, according to the most recent Department of Telecommunications DoT data.
According to the DoT National EMF Portal's most recent daily status report, Jio has installed 99,897 base transceiver stations BTS over 2 of its owned frequencies 700 MHz and 3,500 MHz. The other hand, Bharti Airtel has 22,219 BTS, in comparison to Jio.
According to the March 23 reports, Jio has 3 cell sites while Airtel has 2 for every base station, according to the news agency PTI.
More cell sites and towers are associated with faster speed. On February 28, Ookla, a leader in network intelligence and connectivity insights, reported that Jio's best median speed is 506 Mbps megabytes per second compared to Airtel's 268 Mbps.
Ookla said in the report, 5 G has been in place in India for over four months and already it's having a huge impact on the state of mobile in the country. Speed test Intelligence data shows that median download speeds in India have increased by 115 per cent since the 5 G launch, from a 13.87 Mbps median download speed in September 2022 to 29.85 Mbps in January 2023. In Kolkata, Jio experienced a top 5 G download speed of 506.25 Mbps, while Airtel in Delhi had 268.89 Mbps, it said. Airtel and Jio have ambitious goals in terms of 5 G network rollout. From 5 G networks' inception, 5 G availability across 5 G-capable devices has increased steadily, reaching 8.0 per cent for Airtel and 5.1 per cent for Jio, it said.
India is the second-largest Internet market in the world, just behind China, with over 500 million users. 5 G telecom services were introduced in October 2022.
Jio's USD 25 billion investment seems to be paying off. In January 2023, Jio achieved median 5 G download speeds above 400 Mbps across ten telecom circles. The report said that Jio's True 5 G network is based on a 5 G Standalone 5 G SA that doesn't rely on a 4 G LTE network.
While Jio's initial 5 G speeds fluctuated massively - from low single-digit to speeds well above 800 Mbps, which pointed to the operator recalibrating its networks, the 5 G performance of Jio has stabilised over the past four months. In January 2023, Jio's 5 G early adopters experienced speeds ranging from 246.49 Mbps for the median download speed in Himachal Pradesh to 506.25 Mbps in Kolkata, Ookla said.
It added that Airtel's 5 G early adopters experienced speeds ranging from a 78.13 Mbps median download speed in Kolkata to 268.89 Mbps in Delhi.
In July 2022, Mukesh Ambani resigned as Director of Reliance Jio with immediate effect, and his eldest son Akash Ambani was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors.
Akash, 30, is the non-executive director at Reliance Jio. He was part of teams that negotiated Meta Platforms Inc.'s investment into Jio's parent and has led major acquisitions by Jio in the digital space in the last few years. He led the launch of Jio's 4 G services in India with his sister Isha and worked towards the launch of JioPhone in 2017.
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