Reliance Jio, India's number one telecom operator, will soon start rolling out 5G across several cities in India. Now, we know that Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), had said that Jio had established relationships with several well-known telecom gears and technology vendors, including Ericsson. Ericsson, a Swedish telecom gear company, has been working with all the private telcos in India to help them with the 5G rollout.
Recently, Ericsson released a new radio called Radio 6646. You can read about the radio here. It is a very cost-effective solution developed by Ericsson, which will help the operators in building sustainable 5G networks. So why can it help Jio in the perfect manner?
David Hammarwall, Head of Product Area Networks at Ericsson, said that with this new radio, service providers could scale up 5G standalone (SA) deployments with new applications for enterprises, consumers and mission-critical communications.
It is worth noting that Jio purchased the 700 MHz spectrum during the recently concluded spectrum auction in India. Now, Ericsson says that this radio can also support 700 MHz frequencies, a key spectrum band for 5G SA deployment. Ericsson's Radio 6646 can combine 900 MHz, 800 MHz, and 700 MHz frequency bands into one compact 2G to 5G-capable radio.
Jio to Go for 5G SA
This would result in the radio being able to deliver better coverage performance in combination with the mid-band frequencies. Reliance Industries has confirmed that Jio will go for 5G SA only. This radio seems like the perfect product for Jio to deploy.
Ericsson said that initially, this product would be available in Europe. Since Jio is already working with Ericsson, the telco can eventually purchase the new Radio 6646 and deploy it to deliver great 5G to consumers. Jio would be able to reduce the costs of running the 5G networks because this radio consumes very less power and is also small in size, meaning less carbon footprint.
