Reliance Jio urges government action to phase out 2G and 3G networks

According to Reliance Jio, the Government should come out with a policy for closing down the 2G and 3G networks completely so that unnecessary network costs should be avoided, and that all customers can be migrated to 4G and 5G services. The operator has said in a submission to TRAI that this will also give great impetus to developing ecosystem to 5G use cases.

“There is no doubt that the 5G services, its ecosystem and use cases will play most crucial role in driving digital transformation across various industries by providing faster and more reliable connectivity. 5G with its faster data speeds, increased bandwidth, and lower latency, will provide businesses and innovators with the connectivity and capabilities that can give wings to their dreams,” Jio said in response to a consultation paper floated by the TRAI.

“In this context, it is important to delve upon the need to identify any requirement of policy changes or new policy framework that will foster better and faster adoption and effective utilisation of new technologies for the holistic and sustainable development of the economy driven by 5G ecosystem,” Jio said. 

Though Jio does not have any 2G or 3G network, other operators including Airtel and Vodafone Idea have a significant 2G network.

5G capacities and its ecosystem is seen to be helping enable new business models and revenue streams by supporting newer generations of applications and use cases that were not possible before. This will be a boon for Internet of Things (IoT), Industry 4.0, autonomous vehicles, smart cities, smart monitoring of manufacturing processes, robotics, automation, and AI driven smart factories.