Jio’s next decade: From connecting India to building tech
In Short
Ten years after disrupting connectivity, company eyes global markets with homegrown technology
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Jio’s next decade: From connecting India to building tech
Hyderabad: Ten years after its entry reshaped India’s telecom market, Jio is looking to redefine itself once again. The focus is shifting from subscriber additions and network expansion to building indigenous technology, intellectual property, artificial intelligence (AI), enterprise platforms and products that can potentially be taken to global markets.
The change marks a move from being primarily a technology user to becoming a technology developer and, increasingly, a potential technology exporter. Jio’s network itself is becoming a test bed for technologies that could eventually be commercialised beyond its own operations.
At Jio’s 10th anniversary, Akash Ambani, Managing Director of Jio Platforms, said, “Jio today is much more than a telecom company. We are building original technology in India across connectivity, digital products, enterprise solutions and AI. The opportunity before us is to continue making the benefits of technology accessible at scale, taking these technologies global and strengthening India’s position as a creator of technology for the world.”
From operating networks to building them
When Jio entered the market in 2016, India had historically imported much of its telecom technology and was often late to technology cycles. Jio developed its own 5G core and OSS/BSS systems, the operational software managing functions from network operations and provisioning to billing.
It subsequently expanded this into an end-to-end 5G technology stack spanning the core, radio and operations software, built around a standalone 5G architecture.
Jio achieved pan-India 5G coverage within 15 months of launch, between October 2022 and December 2023. By March 2026, it had more than 268 million 5G users, with 5G accounting for about 55 per cent of wireless traffic. Reliance’s FY2025-26 disclosures put Jio’s overall customer base at more than 524 million.
These numbers also give Jio a large live deployment environment in which technologies can be built, tested and improved across hundreds of millions of users.
The intellectual property story
As of March 31, 2026, Jio Platforms and its subsidiaries had cumulatively filed 6,817 patents covering technologies including 4G, 5G, 6G, AI and cloud. Of these, 1,009 patents had been granted globally.
In 2026, Jio Platforms entered the global top 20 in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Patent Cooperation Treaty rankings for 2025, ranking 12th among companies entering the top 20.
The shift is from buying intellectual property embedded in telecom equipment to creating IP that can potentially be deployed, licensed and commercialised elsewhere.
Jio’s engineering organisation reflects this transition. Its engineering and technology team comprises 11,303 people, or around 40 per cent of its workforce.
Building for Indian problems
Jio has developed proprietary point-to-multipoint Unlicensed Band Radio, or UBR, technology to provide fibre-like broadband connectivity where conventional fibre deployment is difficult.
By March 2026, Jio had crossed 27 million fixed broadband connections, giving it around 43 per cent of India’s fixed broadband market.
Its radio products include macro base stations, outdoor and indoor small cells, millimetre-wave products and integrated 5G-Wi-Fi technologies. It has also developed a 1 Tbps user-plane function and a compact standalone private-network solution described as “5G-in-a-box”. These technologies are shaped by Indian realities: enormous scale, uneven population density and the need to deliver sophisticated technology at lower costs. That could make them relevant to markets across Asia, Africa and Latin America with similar infrastructure challenges.
From technology user to exporter
Jio has indicated that its mobile connectivity stack, home broadband stack and managed autonomous connectivity stack are ready for global monetisation.
A global operator evaluating Jio’s network technology would be looking at products that have operated across a network serving more than half a billion customers and carrying 241 exabytes of annual data traffic in FY2025-26. If successful, this could alter India’s position in the technology value chain, with an Indian company moving from being a buyer of telecom technology to competing as a supplier.
Enterprise, cloud and AI
The technology push is also moving beyond connectivity. Standalone 5G, private networks, edge computing, cloud platforms and autonomous network management are opening up enterprise opportunities.
AI could widen that canvas further. Reliance has articulated an “AI Everywhere, For Everyone” ambition, combining connectivity, computing infrastructure and digital platforms, with AI increasingly embedded across networks, operations and customer-facing platforms.
And then comes 6G
Jio’s patent portfolio already includes 6G, and the company is participating in efforts aimed at shaping future global standards. For India, the significance goes beyond adopting the next generation of mobile technology. Countries that help shape standards can create intellectual property, influence architectures and potentially earn licensing revenues. For Jio, therefore, the next decade is about moving from deploying technology at Indian scale to developing technology that can potentially travel beyond India.
