Beyond telecom: How Jio is building an Indian technology company for the world

Ten years after changing the way Indians access mobile data, Jio is entering a new phase.

The company that once became synonymous with cheap data, rapid network expansion and a huge subscriber base is increasingly presenting itself as something broader: an Indian technology company building its own intellectual property, software, digital platforms and artificial intelligence capabilities.

The change is significant because technology was initially the means through which Jio built its telecom business. Increasingly, the technology itself is becoming part of the product.

At Jio Platforms’ 10-year milestone, Managing Director Akash Ambani described the company as being much more than a telecom operator, pointing to its work in connectivity, digital products, enterprise solutions and AI. The larger ambition is to develop these technologies in India, deploy them at scale and eventually take them to international markets.

From running networks to building the technology

Jio entered the Indian telecom market in 2016, at a time when much of the technology powering the country’s networks came from overseas.

The company has since developed its own 5G core and OSS/BSS systems, which handle functions such as network operations, customer provisioning and billing. It has also built an end-to-end 5G stack covering the core, radio and operations software, based on a standalone 5G architecture.

The scale of Jio’s network gives these technologies a large real-world testing ground. The company achieved pan-India 5G coverage within 15 months of launching the service, between October 2022 and December 2023.

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By March 2026, Jio had more than 268 million 5G users, with 5G making up about 55 per cent of its wireless traffic. Its overall customer base had crossed 524 million.

That scale matters beyond subscriber numbers. It gives Jio the ability to develop and refine technology while operating it across hundreds of millions of users.

Patents show a bigger technology shift

Jio’s changing identity is also visible in its intellectual property portfolio.

As of March 31, 2026, Jio Platforms and its subsidiaries had filed 6,817 patents covering areas such as 4G, 5G, 6G, AI and cloud technologies. Around 1,009 of those patents had received grants globally.

Jio Platforms also entered the global top 20 in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Patent Cooperation Treaty rankings for 2025, placing 12th among companies that made the list.

The shift is important. Instead of primarily acquiring technology from global equipment makers, Jio is increasingly developing intellectual property that could eventually be deployed, licensed or sold outside its own network.

Its engineering workforce reflects the same direction. The company says its engineering and technology team has 11,303 employees, accounting for roughly 40 per cent of its workforce.

Technology built around India’s challenges

Some of Jio’s products have emerged directly from the difficulties of building digital infrastructure across India.

Fixed broadband is one example. While fibre can deliver high-speed connectivity, extending fibre to every household can be expensive and slow. Jio developed its proprietary point-to-multipoint Unlicensed Band Radio, or UBR, technology to provide fibre-like broadband in areas where traditional fibre deployment is difficult.

By March 2026, Jio had more than 27 million fixed broadband connections, giving it about 43 per cent of India’s fixed broadband market.

Its portfolio also includes macro base stations, outdoor and indoor small cells, millimetre-wave products and integrated 5G-Wi-Fi technologies. The company has developed a 1 Tbps user-plane function and a compact standalone private-network product described as “5G-in-a-box”.

These technologies are designed around India’s combination of huge scale, uneven population density and the need to deliver advanced services at relatively low costs. Those same conditions exist in many emerging markets across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Can Jio become a technology exporter?

This is where Jio’s strategy could enter a new phase.

The company has indicated that its mobile connectivity, home broadband and managed autonomous connectivity technology stacks are ready for global monetisation.

In other words, technology originally created to address Jio’s own network requirements could eventually be offered to other telecom operators and enterprises.

The proposition also comes with a major selling point: these systems have already been deployed at enormous scale. A potential overseas customer would not simply be evaluating technology developed in a laboratory. It would be looking at systems operating on a network serving more than half a billion customers and carrying 241 exabytes of annual data traffic in FY2025-26.

If that technology finds customers abroad, it could mark a broader change in India’s place in the telecom value chain — from primarily buying global technology to becoming a supplier of it.

AI, cloud and the 6G opportunity

Jio’s technology ambitions are also moving beyond telecom infrastructure.

Standalone 5G can support private networks and network slicing for sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare and public services. Edge computing, cloud infrastructure and autonomous network management create additional opportunities in the enterprise market.

AI could widen that field further. Reliance has outlined an “AI Everywhere, For Everyone” vision that brings together connectivity, computing infrastructure and digital platforms. The company’s strategy increasingly places proprietary technology and digital services at the centre of Jio’s future.

The longer-term opportunity is 6G. Jio’s patent portfolio already includes 6G technologies, while the company is participating in efforts around future global standards.

For India, having a role in developing those standards could be more consequential than simply adopting the next generation of mobile technology. Standards influence network architecture, intellectual property and, potentially, future licensing revenues.

A different second decade

Jio’s first 10 years were largely about connecting India and making mobile internet affordable at unprecedented scale.

The next decade could be about what India creates after achieving that connectivity.

Jio now has an indigenous 5G stack, thousands of patents, a huge live network for testing technology, home-grown broadband systems and ambitions spanning enterprise services, cloud, AI and 6G.

The bigger test will be whether those capabilities can move beyond Jio’s own network and find customers around the world.

If they do, the company’s transformation will be about more than becoming a bigger telecom operator. It will be about building technology in India, proving it at Indian scale and turning it into an export from India to the world.

(Network18 and TV18 – the companies that operate Firstpost – are controlled by Independent Media Trust, of which Reliance Industries is the sole beneficiary.)