Reliance Jio, India's largest telecom operator, offers its 5G services under the "True 5G" brand, claiming to be the only operator currently providing 5G services via a standalone 5G (SA) network architecture that delivers gigabit speeds. This allows Jio 5G customers to benefit from reduced power consumption on their devices, resulting in up to 40 percent extended battery life. Kiran Thomas, President of Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, explained these benefits during the Q2 FY25 earnings call. Thomas outlined other network advancements and innovations incorporated into the Jio True 5G network, which are discussed in more detail below.
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Jio True 5G
First, Kiran explained why the company's 5G network is called True 5G. Jio uses the term True 5G because it believes the network combines a unique mix of spectrum assets and advanced technical features, such as carrier aggregation and standalone (SA) architecture, making it distinctive not only in India but globally.
Beyond 5G SA, Jio has introduced additional technological innovations in its True 5G network. According to Kiran, these enhancements go "above and beyond" current large-scale deployments, as the company is "continuously growing the installed base of customers using Jio 5G services." Beyond 5G SA, Jio has incorporated several additional technological innovations into its True 5G network, including:
1. True 5G Voice Calling
Jio has introduced what it calls True 5G voice calling, known as Voice Over New Radio (VoNR). Jio is working with most premium handset OEMs to ensure that their devices default to VoNR as the primary mechanism for voice calling whenever users are connected to the Jio 5G network. This means that, right out of the box, most users will experience voice over 5G, resulting in superior voice quality and faster call setup times.
"5G comes with even more advanced security features, making all communications more secure than has traditionally been possible," Kiran explained.
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2. Advanced Interference Mitigation
Another technology Kiran highlighted is Advanced Interference Mitigation. Since Jio operates across various spectrum bands, spanning 4G, 5G, and even multiple bands within 5G, interference is always a challenge, especially in dense environments.
"Typically, the way you manage interference is by making sure one or the other radio backs off so that their signal doesn't interfere with the other radio. But that has traditionally been at the expense of certain loss in capacity. But what we've been able to do with advanced time division duplex interference mitigation is that even without the loss of capacity, now we are able to better manage interference. That means 5G customers will have a much, much superior experience where traditional things like interference won't impact their throughput," Kiran explained.
3. Network Slicing
Kiran also highlighted the standalone architecture of Jio's True 5G Network, which enables the company to utilise network slicing. "We are able to very intelligently create lanes in our network so that each type of traffic we can adequately provision and manage without any impact on the other type of traffic which is flowing through the network," Kiran explained.
a. AirFiber
Jio offers its 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) service, AirFiber, as a wireless home broadband solution using a separate network slice within its 5G network, leveraging the network slicing feature of 5G SA. (1st and 2nd lanes)
"AirFiber and mobility have different requirements, and we want to make sure that those two lanes don't intersect so that the spike in traffic in one of those lanes does not create congestion or degradation in the services in the other lane. So that's one example of these two lanes running," Kiran said.
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b. Voice and Mission-Critical Services
Jio is also using additional lanes (3rd and 4th lanes) for secure voice and mission-critical services, potentially collaborating with entities in safety, health, and related sectors. "Again, those are mission-critical lanes for which absolutely none of the other commercial services ought to interfere. So again, we are creating those additional two lanes, and for certain very, very advanced capabilities and low latency capabilities like gaming or real-time collaboration, again, the priority of the packets going through those need to be different. So again, we are creating additional lanes (No count provided) for that," he added.
In total, Jio has reportedly created six virtual lanes, all on the same 5G network, leveraging network slicing.
"These are the six virtual lanes with different types of philosophies that we are creating, all on the same 5G network, but we can manage them quite efficiently and differently without any one of them impacting the performance of the other," Kiran said.
4. Layer Management
The fourth aspect discussed was call layer management, enhanced with improved carrier aggregation (CA).
"Carrier aggregation is where you take all of these different spectrums and make it look like one consolidated unified network. But with layer management, we are able to work with some of the advanced capabilities available now in handsets to be able to appropriately give the right kind of spectrum for the right use case, so that the carrier aggregation is again very, very efficient and optimal," Kiran explained.
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5. Smart Spectrum Management
Through smart spectrum management, Jio allocates the most efficient and energy-saving spectrum for communication with user equipment (UE). Beyond performance, an added benefit is reduced handset power consumption.
"Smart spectrum management also means that, by allocating the most efficient and energy efficient spectrum for communicating with the UE, one of the indirect benefits, in addition to the performance itself, one of the indirect benefits is also that we are able to reduce the power consumption of the handset, which means that now from the same handset, but working on our network, you are able to get about 20 percent to 40 percent extended battery life because of the better energy efficiency that some of these techniques even enable on the handset," Kiran explained.
6. Location Positioning Accuracy
Jio 5G users can rely on the network for highly accurate location data, compared to what has traditionally been provided by GPS services.
Explaining the functionality, Kiran said, "One of the other aspects of our 5G network is because there are advanced algorithms like the angle of arrival, that we are calculating in our network. That's part of the 5G kind of capability set, which means that now there is better triangulation of devices on our network, and we can get near GPS-like accuracy up to 10 meters if you are connected on 5G, which means even if you don't have visibility to the satellite, and some of those situations we are able to geo locate, which means for anything, which is things like navigation or anything which is hyperlocal use-cases, they can now start relying on the network to give them very accurate location as compared to what has traditionally been delivered using the GPS services. And of course, the GPS is also a very energy-intensive operation. So, most people, or intelligently, the handset is connecting only as needed, whereas with the network-based service, you are all the time having accurate location information in a very energy efficient way."
7. Programmable Networks
Jio is also bringing advanced programmability to its network. Explaining this, Kiran said, "There are a lot more moving pieces in our 5G network. Things like radio beams, traffic steering, and again, very smart algorithms to manage energy efficiency, only spending energy where needed without impacting capacity. All of these are programmable. That means it is not a one-time static configuration. But as situations evolve, we are able to sense what is happening in our network and then adapt each of these elements appropriately to unlock even more capacity and bring better energy efficiency in our network. And all of this obviously also means that there is much better customer experience."
Due to the programmable nature of the network, Jio can sense various parameters, and even if an issue arises, the company can perform automated root cause analysis and quickly address the problem to mitigate many of these issues.
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Conclusion
These are the network-related developments that Jio True 5G is leveraging to deliver services to its nearly 3 million Jio AirFiber customers and over 148 million mobility 5G customers, contributing 34 percent of wireless data traffic. Jio reported a data consumption of 31GB per user per month, while voice usage remains steady at around 977 minutes.
