From connecting India to building its digital future: Jio's next big bet

GUWAHATI: A decade after Jio disrupted India's mobile-data mar­ket, its next ambition is no longer sim­ply to connect more Indians. It is to build the technology that powers how they communicate, work, compute and consume digital services.

When Reliance Jio entered India's telecom market in 2016, its most visi­ble disruption was simple: it made mobile data dramatically cheaper and brought millions of Indians online. Ten years later, the company is at­ tempting something considerably more ambitious-moving from being a massive consumer of telecom tech­nology to becoming a developer and provider of technology across 5G, broadband, devices, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and enterprise services.

The scale of that ambition is evi­dent in figures contained in Jio Plat­ forms' Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP), filed with SEBl on June 19, 2026. At the end of March 2026, Jio had 524.4 million customers, of whom

268.5 million were 5G users. Its net­work carried roughly 60 per cent of India's wireless data traffic during Fis­cal 2026.

But the more significant story lies beneath those numbers. Jio is increas­ingly attempting to own and develop the technology that makes the network, the home, the device and the enterprise work.

From deploying technology to developing it: For decades, India's tel­ecom story was largely one of adopt­ing technologies developed else­ where and deploying them at an ex­traordinary scale. Jio is seeking to al­ ter that equation. Its network incorpo­rates an end-to-end India-developed

50 stack, including a combined 40 and 50 core. radio products and pro­prietary operations and business-sup­ port systems.

Jio has built its network around standalone 5G architecture rather than simply adding 5G capabilities to an existing 40 core. The architecture pro­ vides a foundation for applications such as network slicing, private 50 networks and large-scale machine-to­ machine communication.

With 268.5 million 5G subscribers as of March 31, 2026, Jio has built one of the world's largest 5G subscriber bases outside China.

The company's investment in tech­nology is also reflected in its work­ force and intellectual property. Jio Platforms had 11,303 employees in­ volved in digital products and tech­nology development-around 40 per cent of its workforce. It had filed 6,817 patent applications, of which 1,009 had been granted.

The significance extends beyond Jio Indigenous capability in advanced telecom technology potentially changes India's position from being primarily a market for global technol­ogy to becoming a place where such technology is also developed.

Turning broadband into a digital household platform: The next battle­ ground is the home. Broadband was traditionally little more than an inter­ net connection-a digital pipe bring­ing co1mectivity into a household. Jio is increasingly building an ecosystem around that connection. As of March 31, 2026. Jio had 27.l million home broadband customers and accounted for 67.56 per cent of fixed-broadband net additions during Fiscal 2026.

JioFiber remains part of that net­ work, while JioAirFiber uses fixed wireless technology to reach homes where extending fibre to the last mile can be difficult or costly. The com­pany's proprietary UBR technology is designed to enable faster deploy­ ment of fixed-wireless broadband without extending fibre physically into every home.

Once connected, the household becomes a potential platform for a range of services. JioTV+ can tum the television into an entertainment hub, while cloud services can provide stor­age and access to files and applications. Connected cameras, video door­ bells and other smart-home devices can operate over the same network.

Cloud gaming illustrates an even bigger shift. l11Stead of relying entirely on powerful hardware inside the home. computing-intensive gaming can be processed remotely in data cen­tres and streamed to users. JioCloud PC extends that concept beyond gam­ing, potentially allowing a television to serve as a screen through which users access applications, files and cloud­ based computing.

The broader implication is that computing itself could increasingly move away from individual devices and towards the network.

JioSpaceFiber points to another dimension of the strategy. Satellite connectivity is intended to extend broadband to areas where terrestrial infrastructure is difficult to deploy. Jio Space Technology Limited, a satellite joint venture disclosed in the prospec­tus, suggests a future network architecture combining fibre, fixed wireless, mobile and satellite connectivity.

From telecom networks to indus­trial infrastructure: Jio's ambitions extend beyond consumers. In a facto­ry, warehouse or large enterprise. 5G can connect machines, sensors, cam­ eras and automated systems rather than simply smartpbones.

Jio's Private 50-in-a-Box packag­es a standalone 5G network for enter­prise deployment. Its Jio Things plat­form supports applications involving connected electricity meters, street lighting and other internet of Things applications.

Around these services is an expanding enterprise portfolio encom­passing cloud computing and storage, cybersecurity, managed Wi-Fi, enter­prise broadband, leased lines and uni­fied communications.

The result is a gradual blurring of the traditional boundary between a tel­ ecom operator and a technology company. The network is no longer merely a means of com1ecting people. It can become infrastructure linking people, machines, applications and data.

Al becomes the intelligence layer: lf connectivity provides the foundation and cloud computing supplies the processing power, artificial intelligence is emerging as the intelligence layer.

JioBrain, the company's in-house Al and machine-learning platform, has applications including predictive in­ sights, anomaly detection and network automation. The long-term signifi­cance lies in the possibility of increas­ ingly autonomous networks-sys­tems capable of identifying anomalies, predicting congestion and optimising operations before a problem becomes visible to users.

Jio has also partnered to provide Google Al Pro to eligible Unlimited 5G customers, while Reliance Enterprise Intelligence points towards applica­tions of Al in the enterp1ise market

Taken together, these developments suggest that Al may increasingly func­tion not merely as a standalone consumer product but as a capability embedded across networks, cloud platforms, devic­es and business applications. From a tel­ecom disruption to a technology prop­osition: Jio's first decade changed the economics of connectivity in India its next decade could be about changing the economics of technology itself.

The company is now operating across a far wider technological land­scape: indigenous 5G infrastructure, home broadband, low-cost devices, cloud computing, enterprise net­ works, IoT and artificial intelligence.

That does not mean every part of the strategy will necessarily succeed, nor does it diminish the role of global technology companies and vendors. But it marks a notable shift in India's digital story. For much of the telecom era, India's achievement was its abili­ty to take technologies developed else­ where and deploy them at a scale few countries could match.

Jio's emerging proposition is dif­ferent.

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