Jio & let Jio, India’s crackling telco space

The hugely successful IPO of Reliance Jio Platforms has made it the world’s 5th-most-valued telecom company. So, with Bharti Airtel close on its heels, India now has two telcos in the global top 10 rankings. This speaks to the enormous transformation the country’s telecom industry has undergone with considerable hand-holding by the government. The turnaround is timely because telecom provides the somewhat overlooked, yet vital, backbone for AI.

Latest-generation telecom networks provide the high-speed, low-latency infrastructure to move massive amounts of data between users and the cloud. Alongside, telcos build the institutional trust for enterprises to deploy AI services involving sensitive data. Both Reliance and Bharti are invested in satellite communication and data centres, widening their AI footprint. AI hyperscalers Alphabet and Meta have significant minority stakes in Jio.

The telecom industry globally is transitioning from providing ‘dumb’ grids to offering AI-enabled services, cloud solutions and network-derived intelligence. Network architecture is also changing from download- to upload-intensive traffic as AI prompts climb. Smarter grids are relying on edge computing, where storage and processing happen closer to where the data is created. Telecom companies are becoming AI-native digital enterprises. But this comes with its own set of challenges, like siloed data and brittle software.


The convergence of AI and telecom creates a strong base for India’s digital economy. The new business coming in works on both ends of the traditional squeeze Indian telcos have faced — low tariffs and high spectrum prices. They get to deploy AI to bring down operating costs as the consumer market saturates. AI agents now handle network optimisation, customer interaction, and security and fraud detection. AI use cases in telecom could unleash a global economic impact of up to $100 bn. Valuations of India’s leading telecom firms would suggest that they will be seizing some of that opportunity.