Google, Reliance bring Gemini Pro free to Jio 5G for 18 months

At a time when telecom bundles are becoming a battleground for digital services in India, Google and Reliance have agreed to give Jio Unlimited 5G customers 18 months of free access to a premium package anchored by the Gemini app, a move that positions Gemini Pro as a headline feature for young users aged 18 to 25 before the offer expands more widely.

Eligible subscribers will be able to use the Gemini app to tap the Gemini 2.5 Pro model and unlock advanced image and video generation through Nano Banana and Veo 3.1, while NotebookLM will be available with extended access for study and research; the bundle also adds 2 TB of cloud storage spanning Google Photos, Gmail, Drive, and WhatsApp backups on Android, which frames Gemini Pro not just as a chatbot but as part of a full productivity and media stack.

Activation will be handled through the MyJio app and the free period applies to Jio Unlimited 5G users for the first 18 months, beginning with the 18 to 25 age group and then rolling out to other eligible customers across India; according to Google, the combined value of the benefits is around Rs 35,100 per user, which gives Gemini Pro a clear pricing signal against competing subscriptions.

Rival carriers and platforms are already staking territory in similar ways, with Airtel in July partnering with Perplexity to provide a 12 month Perplexity Pro subscription at no cost to its 360 million users and OpenAI planning to make ChatGPT Go free to all users in India starting November 4, a sequence that underscores how telecom plans are becoming distribution channels for assistants and sets Gemini Pro against a growing field of bundled alternatives.

The timing aligns with Reliance’s creation of a new unit with Google and Meta that focuses on building and integrating foundational technologies, with collaboration spanning model development, computing infrastructure, and deployment at scale across Reliance’s digital ecosystem, which in turn makes Gemini Pro a showcase for how models and distribution can be co designed for mass adoption.

For the broader market in video and media tools, bundling Veo 3.1 and image features alongside cloud storage suggests a push toward multimodal creation that lives inside carrier plans, and it hints that content workflows from capture to archive could happen natively within the same subscription, an approach that could differentiate 5G plans while situating Gemini Pro as a gateway to video generation and knowledge management.

For investors, the structure of this deal points to a global allocation shift toward infrastructure and model deployment in high population mobile markets because distribution partnerships can lower acquisition costs and speed usage, and the pattern raises expectations that more telecom companies will sign platform deals that package personal assistants, storage, and media into one bill where Gemini Pro becomes one of several utilities embedded into connectivity; the enduring lesson for enterprises is that the next era of content will be delivered like network capacity, embedded and expected.