Jio, Google Join Hands in Cloud Partnership in Boost to 5G Plans

The tie-up lends Jio the expertise of global tech giant Google as it expands digital services to small and medium businesses.

By Reuters | Updated: 24 June 2021 15:58 IST

Jio, Google Join Hands in Cloud Partnership in Boost to 5G Plans

Photo Credit: YouTube/ Jio

Mukesh Ambani addressing the annual shareholder meeting at the Reliance AGM 2021

Highlights

Google is working with other telecoms firms on 5G around the world
Jio established a 10-year alliance with Microsoft in 2019
Jio disrupted India's telecoms market in 2016

Alphabet's Google is forging a cloud partnership with Reliance Jio, helping the country's biggest wireless carrier with tech solutions for its enterprise and consumer offerings as it plans to launch 5G services.

The tie-up lends Jio the expertise of a global tech giant as it expands digital services to small and medium businesses as well as hundreds of millions of individual customers. And it gives Google the unmatched scale of Reliance whose new-age businesses range from telecoms to e-commerce.

Jio is part of tycoon billionaire Mukesh Ambani's oil-to-retail conglomerate Reliance Industries.

Reliance Jio Partners With Google to Develop Affordable 4G, 5G Smartphones

"It's a broad partnership, it involves multiple pieces of Alphabet working together," Thomas Kurian, Chief Executive Officer at Google Cloud, told Reuters in an interview ahead of Reliance's annual shareholders meeting on Thursday.

"Our own partnership spans multiple parts of Jio not just the communications business... but also health, retail and other things. And it allows us to bring our technology to many consumers in India in a broad-scale basis as well as to many businesses that are served by Reliance."

While Google is working with other telecoms firms on 5G around the world, the scale of the Jio-Google cloud partnership is among the biggest for the California-headquartered company globally, said Kurian.

Jio Google Smartphone Launches September 10: Mukesh Ambani

He declined to share the terms of the cloud contract with Jio.

Jio established a 10-year alliance with Microsoft in 2019, aiming to build data centres across India that will be hosted on Azure cloud in a bid to offer services to the country's booming start-up economy.

Jio disrupted India's telecoms market in 2016 when it launched with cut-price data plans and free voice services. It forced several competitors out of the market and is now India's biggest mobile carrier with more than 422 million customers.

10 Ways the Indian Telecom Industry Changed After Jio Started Operations

Google last year invested $4.5 billion (roughly Rs. 33,370 crores) in Jio's parent Jio Platforms, a move that landed the US tech giant a rare board seat alongside rival Facebook which has also pumped $5.7 billion (roughly Rs. 42,270 crores) into the digital unit.

Ambani has previously said Jio, which also counts Qualcomm and Intel among its backers, would "pioneer the 5G revolution" in India in 2021.

Reliance to Invest Rs. 75,000-Crore in Clean Energy ‘Giga Factories’

What were the best games at E3 2021? We discussed this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.