Jio 5G In India Launch Date Bands Cities Plans Sim Card Download Speed And More

The 2022 5G auctions are over, telecom companies have been allocated the spectrum, and now we await the rollout of 5G network services in India. Among all the telcos, Reliance Jio has been making quite the buzz for a pan-India 5G rollout in 2022. Jio is uniquely positioned in the market because it has bought the highest 5G spectrum, has built its own 5G network stack, and may also bring support for India’s 5Gi standard. So if you are wondering about Jio’s 5G rollout plans, you have come to the right place. In this article, we have covered the Jio 5G India launch date, its 5G band support, the list of cities where Jio 5G will launch, etc. On that note, let’s dive right in.

In this article, we have summarized everything we know about Reliance Jio’s 5G network services in India. From Jio 5G launch date to 5G bands support, we have not left out any detail in this article. So expand the table below and let’s start with the 5G spectrum that the Indian telco has bought.

• Jio 5G Spectrum: 5G Bands in IndiaJio 5G in India: SA or NSA?Jio 5G Rollout: Launch DateJio 5G Supported Cities in IndiaDo You Need a New Jio 5G SIM?Jio 5G Upload/ Download SpeedsJio 5G Plans and Price in IndiaJio AirFiber Explained

Jio 5G Spectrum: 5G Bands in India

In the 5G auctions conducted by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in India, Jio acquired 24.7GHz of spectrum for Rs 88,078 crores. It makes Jio the highest bidder, having the largest spectrum pan-India (26.77 GHz).

In the low-band 5G spectrum (also called sub-GHz ), Jio has made its position clear that it will provide 5G services all over India, touching every last corner of the country. It bought the 700MHz band across all the 22 circles in India and some 800MHz sub-GHz bands in 4 circles.

Jio 5G in India: SA or NSA?

At the recently-concluded Reliance AGM 2022, the company’s chairman Mukesh Ambani announced that Jio will deliver “true 5G” in India on an end-to-end 5G network. As we explained in our in-depth 5G SA vs NSA article, this form of network is called Standalone 5G (SA 5G), and it seems like Jio is going to bring SA 5G to both cities and rural areas by December 2023. He further explained that 5G on Jio’s network will be over 5G infrastructure, and there will be no dependency on existing 4G equipment whatsoever. And that’s a big deal as Airtel 5G and Vodafone Idea (Vi) 5G are expected to rely on NSA 5G at the start.

As a result, Jio 5G would be one of the rare telecom operators around the world having features like ultra-low latency, voice over 5G NR (VoNR), network slicing, massive communication between machines, immersive experiences while gaming, video streaming, and more.

So to sum up, with true SA 5G deployment, carrier aggregation support, and an excellent mix of low, mid, and premium 5G frequency bands, Jio is all set to revolutionize mobile connectivity in the 5G era.

While Reliance Jio was previously rumored to celebrate ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’ with a 5G rollout in India, making us all think that Jio 5G services will launch on August 15, 2022, but that did not happen. But we have an official release date, thanks to Reliance’s 45th AGM meeting.

Mukesh Ambani claimed that it’s the fastest 5G rollout plan done by Jio, and that’s praiseworthy. Further, he also added that Jio will soon  become the world’s largest and most advanced 5G network.

As we noted above, Jio has bought 5G bands for all 22 circles, so yeah Jio 5G is coming to all regions across India. However, at the 45th Reliance AGM, Mukesh Ambani announced that Jio 5G will be initially launched in four metro cities — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai — during Diwali, 2022, which falls in the last week of October.

We know that Jio has completed 5G coverage planning in more than 1,000 cities, so a pan-India rollout is surely imminent. The coverage planning has been based on targeted customer consumption and revenue potential, and Jio has used heat maps, 3D maps, and ray tracing technology. Moreover, it has conducted trials for various 5G use cases like virtual and augmented reality, low-latency cloud gaming, online live TV streaming, and telemedicine, among others.

Recently, we wrote a detailed article clarifying whether you need a 5G SIM for using 5G services. Here, we noted that none of the Indian telecom operators have announced that a new 5G SIM is required to access the 5G network. So if you have a Jio 4G SIM, you will likely be able to use Jio’s 5G service without any problem or SIM upgrade. That said, we are watching this space closely, and if Jio announces a new 5G SIM card policy, we will update the article accordingly.

Jio 5G Upload/ Download Speeds

So far, Jio has conducted 5G trials in 8 cities and has clocked 5G speeds in varying degrees. A recent 91Mobiles report shows that Jio’s 5G trial in Mumbai offered up to 8x faster download speeds than 4G’s bandwidth. It appears that Jio 5G can bring download speeds up to 420Mbps and upload speeds up to 412 Mbps, which is a massive upgrade over 4G speeds in India.

At the Reliance AGM 2022, the company touted that it can deliver speeds up to 1Gbps indoors using its indigenous network stack, which is impressive. An interesting bit here is that Jio built its own 5G network stack using Open-RAN tech with Radisys by using equipment from different vendors.

It’s too early to say what will be Jio’s 5G plans and pricing in India. However, we are well aware of Reliance Jio’s competitive practices, so we expect Jio’s 5G plan will be somewhere between Rs 400 to Rs 500 per month. Currently, Jio’s ARPU (average revenue per user) is around Rs 175.

Jio AirFiber Explained

At the Reliance Annual General Meeting 2022, the company announced a one-of-a-kind device that lets you create a personal Wi-Fi hotspot inside your home taking advantage of Jio’s true SA 5G network and 700MHz frequency band. The best part is that it’s completely wireless, and you can place it anywhere inside your home at your convenience. It’s called Jio AirFiber, and you can read about it using the linked article.

This is an effort to bring Gigabit speeds to every household and office without using a wired fiber connection. Further, this will also boost India’s ranking to the top 10 nations in the fixed broadband category, which is one of Jio’s big ambitions. Overall, it is a seamless solution by Jio to offer wireless Gigabit speed leveraging its end-to-end SA 5G network. It will also be used to bring Jio Cloud PCs to households in rural and semi-urban areas, enabling students and workers to use a virtual desktop computer in the cloud.