Famed chipset maker and technology company Intel on Monday announced that it would be working with India’s top telco, Reliance Jio in order to develop 5G networking technology. In case you missed it, Intel’s venture capital unit had invested $250 million in the year 2020 in Reliance Industries Ltd’s Jio Platforms unit, stating, at the time that the two companies would be able to find areas of technology partnership. On Monday, Intel mentioned it would be working on “co-innovations” with Reliance Jio for the company’s 5G radio-access network or RAN among other things. Navin Shenoy, the executive vice president and general manager of the data platforms group at Intel, stated to Reuters in an interview that this was the fruit of that partnership. He also mentioned that 5G in India is going to be massive and that Reliance Jio is doing it in a non-legacy way. Do note that Reliance Jio is one of many carriers present around the world that will make use of a new approach when it comes to the building of 5G networks.
What Do We Know About the Partnership
Instead of using gear from telecommunications-specific firms such as Nokia, Ericsson or Huawei Technologies Cos, carriers are now shifting toward the use of software to handle more network functions as well as to tap the same kind of standard computing equipment used in data centres to ensure ease of running for the networks. When it comes to Intel, it has been losing valuable share in the core data centre and personal computing market to its rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc or AMD post years of issues in manufacturing. However, it is worth noting that networking chips have become an increasingly important part of the company’s business, rising 20% in 2020 to account for approximately $6 billion of its $77.9 billion overall sales. The General Manager of Intel’s network platforms group, Mr Dan Rodriguez said that part of that growth had come from Intel’s decision approximately a decade ago to invest in software much like an operating system for the company’s network chips. The system which was dubbed FlexRAN, lets carriers or software firms write down code for 5G networks. Furthermore, Intel mentioned on Monday that the software from Cohere Technologies could result in double utilization of some network spectrum via Intel’s chips which would result in the benefit of carriers that spend billions when it comes to the purchase and acquisition of spectrum rights.
