Reliance Jio in talks with Tesla to provide private network: Report

According to a media report, Reliance Jio is in discussion with Telsa, led by Elon Musk, to set up a captive private network for its factory, as the company is planning to build a manufacturing unit in India.

“The talks between Jio and Tesla are at a preliminary stage and any further developments are expected only when the latter firms up its plans for setting up a manufacturing unit in India,” sources said.

The network will manage all the important operations at a faster speed. It will also look at connected car solutions, automation of production processes, among others, industry sources said.

As per a Jio executive, 5G is majorly for enterprise connectivity and the company is exploring opportunities in the automobile, healthcare, manufacturing and other industries with the possible use cases, and offering to build and manage their networks.

A captive private 5G network will help enterprises experience high data speed and data carrying capacity within their premises, which may not be possible if they use public networks. The same solutions will also help these companies to benefit from Industry 4.0, a technology considered as the next revolution in the area of manufacturing, experts said.

As reported earlier, in a change of approach, Tesla is now considering manufacturing in India and is no longer pressing with its earlier demand for New Delhi to first lower import duty on completely built units, which is at 100% for cars costing $40,000 and above.

Last week, a team from Tesla comprising supply chain executives held discussion with the ministry as well as officials in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on the manufacturing unit.

“They (Tesla) are very seriously looking at India as a production and innovation base,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, said last week.

“We are open to concessions, subsidies if they (Tesla) manufacture here,” Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari had earlier said at an event.