Reliance Jio and Musk’s Tesla in 5G private network talks for Indian factory

Indian telco Reliance Jio is reported to be in discussion with EV car behemoth Tesla to build out a private 5G network for the car firm’s proposed Indian car plant.

The network would manage all the critical operations at faster speeds and also look at connected car solutions, automation of the production process, among other things.

According to Indian business publication Financial Express, which cited unnamed industry sources, the telco is also reaching out to other companies in the automotive, healthcare and manufacturing sectors with possible use cases, while offering to build and manage their networks.

The talks between Jio and Elon-Musk-owned Tesla are said to be in the preliminary stages and further developments are expected only once the latter finalises its plans for an Indian facility.

Jio is not the first telco in India to build private 5G network setups in India.

Late last year rival firm Airtel announced a partnership with IT services firm Tech Mahindra to bring a 5G enterprise solution to Mahindra and Mahindra’s auto facility in Chakan – making it the first 5G-enabled auto manufacturing unit in India.

Private 5G networks claim to offer reliable, resilient wireless connectivity to support Industry 4.0.

Documented use cases include Agrifood’s use of Ericsson’s Private 5G to deploy IoT infrastructure to support several business cases, including asset condition monitoring and the collection of data from machinery.

Last week the Swedish telco announced that it had also formed a partnership with Telia in the Baltics to integrate a 5G private network into its own supply chain to demonstrate the capabilities of the technology.

Nokia has similarly created a private 4G and 5G network at its R&D facility in Poland.