THEBUSINESSBYTES BUREAU

MUMBAI, SEPTEMBER 24, 2026

Ten years after transforming India’s connectivity landscape, Jio is entering its next chapter — one increasingly defined by indigenous technology, intellectual property, artificial intelligence, enterprise platforms and an ambition to take Made-in-India technology to global markets.

For much of its first decade, the Jio story was defined by subscriber numbers, data consumption, network expansion and a dramatic reduction in the cost of mobile internet.

Now, a different story is beginning to emerge: that of a technology company building its own network software, digital platforms and engineering capabilities. Jio is no longer looking at technology merely as infrastructure required to run a telecom network. Increasingly, technology itself is becoming the product.

At Jio’s tenth anniversary, Akash Ambani, Managing Director of Jio Platforms, articulated that transition, saying: “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.”

That ambition represents a significant evolution from where the company began.

From Operating Networks to Building Them

When Jio entered the market in 2016, India had historically imported much of its telecommunications technology and was often a late entrant to new technology cycles.

Jio developed its own 5G core and OSS/BSS systems — the operational software that manages functions ranging 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.

The technology was then tested at a scale that few technology developers can access.

Jio achieved pan-India 5G coverage within 15 months of launch, between October 2022 and December 2023. By March 2026, the company had more than 268 million 5G users, with 5G accounting for about 55 per cent of its wireless traffic. Reliance’s FY2025-26 disclosures put Jio’s overall customer base at more than 524 million.

What makes those numbers important from a technology perspective is not simply their size. They provide Jio with something that technology companies value enormously: a live deployment environment in which products can be built, tested and improved across hundreds of millions of users.

The Intellectual Property Story

Another measure of Jio’s transition can be found away from the network and inside patent databases.

As of March 31, 2026, Jio Platforms and its subsidiaries had cumulatively filed 6,817 patents covering technologies including 4G, 5G, 6G, artificial intelligence and cloud. Of these, 1,009 patents had been granted globally.

In 2026, Jio Platforms also entered the global top 20 in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Patent Cooperation Treaty rankings for 2025. The company ranked 12th among companies entering the top 20, following an increase in published PCT applications during the year.

That is significant for a company whose origins lie in telecom operations.

The shift is from buying intellectual property embedded in somebody else’s equipment to creating intellectual property that can potentially be deployed, licensed and commercialised elsewhere.

Jio’s engineering organisation reflects this transition as well. According to the company, its engineering and technology team comprises 11,303 people, representing around 40 per cent of its workforce.

Building for Indian Problems

Jio’s technology choices show how building in India can produce technologies that are potentially relevant to other emerging markets.

Take home broadband. Fibre is the conventional route to high-speed fixed broadband, but extending it to every household across India can be expensive and time-consuming.

Jio 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.

The same principle can be seen across its telecom portfolio. 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 are engineering choices shaped by Indian realities — enormous scale, uneven population density and the need to deliver sophisticated technology at dramatically lower costs.

That could potentially make these technologies relevant to other markets across Asia, Africa and Latin America, where similar economic and infrastructure challenges exist.

From Technology User to Technology Exporter

That leads to perhaps the biggest change in Jio’s business proposition.

Jio has indicated that its mobile connectivity stack, home broadband stack and managed autonomous connectivity stack are ready for global monetisation.

Technology developed initially to solve Jio’s own network requirements could increasingly become something the company sells to other operators and enterprises.

There is an unusual advantage in that proposition. A global telecom operator evaluating Jio’s network technology would not be buying an untested product developed in a laboratory. It would be evaluating technology that has operated across a network serving more than half a billion customers and carrying 241 exabytes of annual data traffic in FY2025-26.

This will not be easy. But if successful, it could change India’s position in the technology value chain. An Indian company that was once primarily a buyer of global telecom technology is positioning itself to compete as a supplier.

Enterprise, Cloud and AI Widen the Canvas

The technology story is moving beyond connectivity.

Standalone 5G enables secure network slicing for factories, hospitals and public networks, while private 5G, edge computing, cloud platforms and autonomous network management open up a larger enterprise opportunity.

AI could expand that opportunity further.

Reliance has articulated a broader ambition of “AI Everywhere, For Everyone”, combining connectivity, computing infrastructure and digital platforms. Its latest annual report positions proprietary technologies and digital services as central to Jio’s strategy, with AI increasingly being embedded across networks, operations and customer-facing platforms.

For Jio, there is a familiar logic to the AI opportunity: build technology that works at Indian scale and economics, make it accessible to a much wider population, and then potentially take that capability to markets with similar requirements.

And Then Comes 6G

Historically, India largely entered new generations of mobile technology after the standards and intellectual property had already been developed elsewhere. Jio wants the next cycle to be different.

Its patent portfolio already includes 6G, and the company is participating in efforts aimed at shaping future global standards.

Countries that help define global technology standards do more than adopt technology. They create intellectual property, influence architectures and potentially earn licensing revenues.

For India, it is the difference between arriving after the technology has been created and having a seat at the table while it is being created.

The Second Decade

Jio’s first decade demonstrated what could happen when digital connectivity became affordable and available at unprecedented scale.

Its second decade is shaping up around a different question: Can a company that built technology for India turn India into a source of technology for the world?

The pieces are beginning to come together: an indigenous 5G stack, thousands of patents, hundreds of millions of users providing real-world scale, home-grown broadband technologies and ambitions spanning enterprise, cloud, AI and 6G.

The transformation is therefore no longer simply about connecting India. It is increasingly about building technology in India, proving it at Indian scale and taking that technology to the world.