India’s Reliance Jio has moved fast to capitalize on its 5G Standalone (SA) network by launching 10 nationwide network slices pitched at consumer and enterprise use cases, as well as FWA (Fixed Wireless Access). This follows an impressive national rollout of 5G in less than three years, following the country’s summer 2022 5G spectrum auctions, with Jio itself as the market leader, having notched up 213 million 5G users by the end of June 2025. By contrast, the number two telco, Bharti Airtel, currently has around 140 million 5G users and is yet to launch commercial 5G network slicing services. This is because Airtel initially built its nationwide 5G network on NSA (Non-Standalone), still reliant on a 4G core unable…