Jio Platforms is to expand globally, selling its expertise and tech to other enterprises, including telcos
Reliance Industries Limited’s (RIL) digital business unit Jio Platforms, has announced plans for global expansion. Jio Platforms owns Reliance Jio which has been a runaway success in fixed and mobile infrastructure in India, completing reshaping the market there. It launched its 4G mobile network in the country in 2016 as a new entrant and now has more than 400 million customers.
The expansion plans were announced by Kiran Thomas, President and CEO of Jio Platforms and its COO, Anish Shah, at TM Forum’s flagship event, Digital Transformation World, which is taking place this week in Copenhagen.
New model
Jio Platforms is following a recently established model with Rakuten Symphony leveraging its expertise, technology and experience gleaned from building out Rakuten Mobile in Japan, most notably in Germany where it is responsible for new entrant 1&1’s 5G network.
Another Japanese operator, NTT Docomo, also wants to find new revenues from selling the software-based systems it deployed in its own 5G architecture. Korea’s SK Telekom is also looking to export its metaverse platform, ifland, to other operators, including via Deutsche Telekom in Europe.
Like Rakuten, which launched the world’s first native Open RAN network in Japan, pioneering Jio Platforms, developed much of its own technology, and bolstered through acquisitions – in Jio’s case by acquiring Radisys for its telco software stack back in 2018.
Jio Platforms has attracted investment from some of the world’s biggest companies, thereby avoiding the debt mountains that bedevil so many other operators around the world and invest heavily in technology.
Platform of platforms
Jio Platforms’ architecture is a collection of platforms with cloud-native applications such as AI, APIs, data, experience and others which it intends to offer as products designed to help enterprises digitalise their operations.
As part of the RIL conglomerate, the platforms business can also draw on in-depth knowledge of sectors as diverse as manufacturing, retail, mass media, gas and petrochemicals.
Jio Platforms expects these factors will help it become as successful in the enterprise sector as it has in consumer services – a goal held by many operators but yet to be achieved. Reliance Jio will is rolling out 5G in India, having secure the necessary spectrum, and will spend $25 billion on national roll to be completed by the end of next year – and productise the tech and expertise it gains to sell as platform-based applications to other operators in the process.
Whether or not the likes of Rakuten Symphony, NTT DoCoMO, SK Telecom and Jio Platforms succeed or not remains to be seen, but it should certainly give the operator and vendor communities much to consider in the coming years.