Statuses of India telecom industry

India, with nearly 800 million 4G subscribers, began its deployment of the 5G network in the fourth quarter of 2022 with the country's top two telecom operators – Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel (Airtel) – separately announcing plans to achieve full 5G coverage nationwide by the end of 2023 or at the end of first-quarter 2024.

Although their initial deployment still mainly focuses on adopting conventional telecom equipment, Reliance Jio has continued to test 5G Open RAN solutions that integrate in-house developed software with partners' hardware. Airtel, on the other hand, has noted that it plans to incorporate Open RAN into its system at the end of 2023.

With the support from India's Production Linked Incentive (PLI) program, shipments of Open RAN equipment developed with in-house technologies and manufactured locally in India are expected to ramp up year after year in the next 2-5 years.