Jio 4G network will soon cover 99% of India's population, surpassing 2G coverage: Report

Reliance Jio and Samsung have today announced a partnership for bringing LTE coverage to a staggering 99 percent of the Indian population, which would make LTE more accessible than 2G networks. The Jio revolution, which started in 2016, has made India the number 1 consumer of mobile data, up from the 152nd rank in 2017.[caption id="attachment_3851057" align="alignleft" width="380"]

Representaional image. Reuters[/caption]Heavy competition as a result of Jio's aggressive pricing strategies has forced other telecom giants to reduce their data fares, which has brought down the price of data per GB by 20 times. Jio now has 160 million users and claims to handle 55 petabytes (55,000,000 GB) of data every day. Along with this, Jio apparently supports 14.4 hours of video consumption per user per month.Jio's partnership with Samsung will look to provide a fully digital landscape in India in which IoT is expected to play a big part. As per Samsung, this IoT network will be the first of its kind in India and it will provide services such as vehicle tracking, support smart appliances, smart metering, surveillance and more. The NB-IoT service by Jio and Samsung has been successfully deployed in Mumbai, and soon enough, we should see it in other parts of the country as well via a simple software upgrade."We are delighted to contribute to Jio's success story and rapid growth. We have been striving to offer the best experience possible to all users at Jio. Jio's LTE network will unlock the potential of IoT and promise a much more safe and convenient environment for users." said Youngky Kim, President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics.As for the upcoming 5G technology, Jio says that it can demo it as early as tomorrow as its network is based on pure LTE. A single software upgrade would make every single cell tower from 1 GBps to 20 GBps. The switch from 4G to 5G will be offered overnight says the company.Commenting of Airtel's 5G demo in November last year, Jio officials stated that "It's not about optics. 5G is beyond optics. It's about infrastructure development and we're the only ones who have done that from day zero. We're a complete IP-based network. We just have to flip a switch and we'll be 5G-ready".Disclosure: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments LtdDisclaimer: Tech2 was invited to MWC 2018 by Huawei, who were responsible for all expenses related to travel and accommodation.Be sure to follow our MWC 2018 page, Twitter and Facebook channels for LIVE updates from the show floor.