India’s telecom giant Reliance is working with Google on a $25 billion plan to develop affordable 5G smartphones and services, the company said on Monday.

Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani said during the company’s annual general meeting that Jio’s 5G network, which will be launched starting with New Delhi and Mumbai before being expanded across the rest of the country by next year December, will be the world’s largest.

The plan, which is the latest in the company’s efforts to disrupt India’s telecom market, is expected to be executed in two months. It has a promise of crashing the cost 5G devices in India, making it “ultra-affordable”.

“To take the 5G mass market, a sub-$100 phone is imperative and Jio is rightly positioned to bring 5G to the masses,” Reuters quoted Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint, as saying.

Reliance Jio, which owns the largest share of India’s telecom market with more than 420 million subscribers, beat competitors to clinch airwaves worth $11 billion in a $19 billion 5G spectrum auction earlier this month.

Jio has deployed ‘price-crashing’ as a playbook to win market shares since 2016, when it launched cheap 4G data plans and free voice services. The playbook was also used by the company when it partnered with Google to introduce an $81 4G smartphone.

India has the second largest telecom market in the world, but about 700 million people still don’t own smartphones due to cost. Thus, the key to putting more smartphones in people’s hands lies largely in making it affordable.

Nigeria’s similar situation

In Africa where Nigeria has the largest telecom market, the cost of 5G devices poses a threat to successful rollout of the fifth-generation services.

In an interview with Punch last month, Vice President, Global Telecommunications Industry, IBM, Craig Wilson, pointed at the affordability of 5G devices as the biggest threat to successful rollout of 5G services in Africa.

He said that although some device manufacturers have committed to bringing costs down to around $150, the cost of a 5G device currently runs around $350, making them unaffordable for many.

“Still, many industry analysts believe that 5G devices need to be at about $50 to support mass adoption across Africa. The high cost of 5G phones is a major impediment, and it impacts the launch the fifth generation network on a commercial scale when there are not enough mobile devices capable of receiving it,” he said.

MTN Nigeria, the leading telecom company in the country that has just kicked off its 5G rollout, is caught in the challenge of unaffordable 5G devices.

MTN and Mafab won the 3.5 gigahertz (GHz) spectrum auction for the deployment of Fifth Generation technology in December 2021.

Nigeria has a population of more than 200 million people with only about 40 million estimated to own smartphones. To fill this huge gap through 5G rollout requires availability of affordable 5G devices.

With the success of the rollout in Nigeria depending much on making low-cost 5G smartphones available, MTN may need to copy Jio’s “ultra-affordable” plan.

Markets are vector quantities with magnitude (market size) and direction (customer preferences). Unless your products evolve and adapt, you will remain a scalar quantity (only magnitude with no antenna to pick the directional patterns from customers). Today at Tekedia Institute Mini-MBA Live, we will have a conversation on Winning in Markets, in this last week of edition 8.

Every business model begins with an assumption on knowing and understanding the customer frictions with capabilities to provide products and services to fix them.

But most of the time, those assumptions must evolve. And that means, the greatest companies are those that have mastered the art of adaptability because the needs of customers change. Understand. Adapt. Win.

At Tekedia Institute, we are understanding the physics of business and how to drive momentum in company growth. Join us for the next edition which begins Sept 12 here. 

Cost remains N90,000 or $170 for the 12-week program which has both pre-recorded and online, all remotely executed. Rated “E” for everyone with secondary school education.

As the global economy gradually shifts focus to technology, many countries are beginning to pave the way for the future economic boom. A major line of action being taken by these countries is harvesting tech talents from across the globe.

On Monday, Singapore announced new work visa rules designed to woo foreign talent as part of the country’s efforts to steer economic growth, accelerating recovery from covid-19-induced economic shortfalls.

Under the new visa rules which will be available from January, there is a new five-year visa for people earning at least S$30,000 ($21,445.42) a month. In addition, holders are allowed to work for multiple companies at one time and their spouses are granted work permits, according to the Ministry of Manpower.

“We cannot leave any room for investors to doubt or have questions as to whether Singapore remains open,” Tan See Leng, the city-state’s Manpower Minister, told a news conference.

“As a country with little or no resources, talent is our only resource and talent acquisition is an offensive strategy for us,” he added.

Also, the rules created the Overseas Networks and Expertise (ONE) pass, allowing exceptional candidates in sports, arts, science and academia who don’t meet the salary criteria to hold a long-term visa. Other measures include allowing some tech professionals, whose skills are in short supply; to be eligible for five-year visas, up from two- to three-years currently, from September 2023.

The new rules also reduced the processing time for employment passes, typically granted to high-paid professionals, to 10 days.

“Both businesses and talent are searching for safe and stable places to invest, live and work in. Singapore is such a place,” Tan See Leng said on Monday. “It is therefore timely to leverage on this opportunity to cement Singapore’s position as a global hub for talent.”

Under the new visa rules, Singapore plans to exempt jobs from the need to be advertised locally before hiring foreigners under a system called Fair Consideration Framework. The measure, which will take effect from Sept. 1 next year, is a shift from the old rule which made only the top 10% of Employment Pass holders eligible.

Under a system called Fair Consideration Framework (FCF), jobs are advertised mainly for locals before they could be offered to foreigners.  The duration of FCF advertisements, where applicable, will be halved to 14 days, the ministry said, adding that processing time for all EP applications will be cut to 10 business days from the current maximum three weeks.

Singapore has remained a popular choice for foreign companies seeking to establish their base abroad. But the South Asian country introduced tight safety measures to curb the pandemic, resulting in population drop as many expatriates left the country.

But as the world increasingly wins the fight against the pandemic, Singapore is seeking to replenish its economic losses and to create an investment destination that will compete with other places like Hong Kong, the UK, Australia and the UAE.

“This is a much-needed progressive step that fills the gap. It feels like Singapore is really addressing the gap at the top end of talent, not just in terms of salary, but capabilities. Talent, globally, is quite mobile and there’s a number of competitive hubs that are trying to get access to that global talent,” said Amit Gupta, president of TiE Singapore, the Singapore chapter of the Silicon Valley-founded global non-profit organization that aims to build an entrepreneur ecosystem.

However, there is concern that the new visa rules will further harm the African tech economy. The continent’s aim to develop a tech-based economy is increasingly being undermined by talent poaching. With many of Africa’s top tech talent hoping to move abroad for a better life or work remotely for foreign companies that offer better pay, Nigeria for instance, will likely feel the impact of the new Singapore visa rules starting next year.