Reliance Jio, the telecom behemoth, which became the largest market player in India in less than four years of its launch, was praised by the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a tweet. “The tide is turning toward trusted 5G vendors and away from Huawei. The world’s leading telecom companies – Telefonica, Orange, Jio, Telstra, and many more-are becoming ‘Clean Telcos’. They are rejecting doing business with tools of the CCP surveillance state, like Huawei,” said Pompeo.
The tide is turning toward trusted 5G vendors and away from Huawei. The world’s leading telecom companies—Telefonica, Orange, Jio, Telstra, and many more—are becoming “Clean Telcos.” They are rejecting doing business with tools of the CCP surveillance state, like Huawei.
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) June 24, 2020
Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Jio was among the first companies to reject Made in China products, and in an event last year, he proudly announced that not single equipment used by the company is manufactured in China.
While other major telecom players of the country including state owned BSNL used Huawei and ZTE’s equipment for their 4G infrastructure, the visionary businessman sourced all of its equipment from South Korean telecom major Samsung.
In the last four years, Reliance Jio has emerged as one of the major telecom players of the world with more than 40 crore customers. Mukesh Ambani is planning to separate telecom and e-commerce venture from the Reliance Industries Limited, under which so far all the businesses of Reliance- from oil to chemical to retail and telecom- operated.
The separate entity would be listed at New York Stock Exchange like the Chinese telecom majors, which went for listing in the US for better valuation. Secretary Pompeo’s statement paves the way for Jio’s smooth listing at US stock exchange. The company has already raised around 20 billion dollars from American equity investors and Facebook, and currently it is valued around 65 billion dollars.
The US administration went up all against Chinese telecom companies, as they presented security threat to the US and the free world. “The Chinese Communist Party is behaving in ways that fundamentally put the American people’s security at risk. The @realDonaldTrump Administration is the first in decades to take this threat seriously,” Pompeo had said in an earlier tweet.
The Chinese Communist Party is behaving in ways that fundamentally put the American people’s security at risk. The @realDonaldTrump Administration is the first in decades to take this threat seriously.
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) June 24, 2020
Since the outbreak of Coronavirus, countries around the world are angry with China and want to hold Beijing accountable for the cover up of the virus, which led to its spread around the world. The United States, where more than 1 lakh people have lost their lives due to the pandemic, is angry with the way China has handled the pandemic. And Trump administration is punishing Chinese Communist Party through economic sanctions on Chinese companies, especially the state owned ones like Huawei, are the major target.
Countries around the world are throwing Chinese companies out of their market amid American pressure. This has led to Huawei and ZTE losing major projects in Europe, North America, South Asia, as well as Southeast Asia.
Chinese telecom companies are without doubt more efficient and cheaper compared to European, South Korean, and American players. But, as the data of these companies are at the disposal of the Chinese Communist Party, therefore, these companies cannot be trusted. And security threat has led forced exit of Chinese players from many countries.
This gives major opportunity to telecom players of other countries. In the last few months, Nokia and Ericsson, which has become moribund due to rise of Chinese companies, bagged many projects in the countries around the world.
If Jio takes steps to develop its own 5G network, it can become a global telecom player and en e-commerce player with the support of Indian and US governments. The United States has already declared it a “clean” company, and this has given Jio to expand in American as well as other markets.
