To boost 5G Plans, Jio and Google Join Hands in Cloud Partnership

As the preparation of introducing 5G service is taking shape, Alphabet's Google is forming a cloud collaboration with Reliance Jio, assisting the country's largest cellular provider with digital solutions for its corporate and consumer offerings.

As it offers digital services to small and medium companies as well as hundreds of millions of individual consumers, Jio will benefit from the experience of a global IT behemoth. It also provides Google with the unrivalled size of Reliance Industries, whose new-age industries range from telecommunications to e-commerce.

Jio is a branch of Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries, an oil-to-retail conglomerate.

In an interview ahead of Reliance's annual shareholders' meeting, Thomas Kurian, Chief Executive Officer of Google Cloud, said, "It's a wide collaboration, it involves various components of Alphabet working together."

"Our cooperation with Jio includes not just the communications industry, but also health, retail, and other areas. It also enables us to offer our technology to a large number of customers in India, as well as numerous companies supported by Reliance."

While Google is working on 5G with other telcos across the world, the Jio-Google cloud relationship is one of the largest for the California-based corporation, according to Kurian.

He refused to reveal the specifics of Jio's cloud contract.

In 2019, Jio announced a 10-year partnership with Microsoft, with the goal of building data centres across India that will be housed on the Azure cloud, in order to serve the country's burgeoning start-up industry.

When Jio started in 2016 with low-cost data plans and free phone services, it shook up the Indian telecommunications industry. It has pushed numerous competitors out of the market and currently has over 422 million users, becoming India's largest mobile provider.

Last year, Google spent $4.5 billion (approximately Rs. 33,370 crores) in Jio's parent company, Jio Platforms, earning it a rare board seat alongside competitor Facebook, which has also invested $5.7 billion (about Rs. 42,270 crores) in the digital unit.

Ambani has stated that Jio, which is backed by Qualcomm and Intel, will "pioneer the 5G revolution" in India in 2021.