Vodafone-Idea Partners With Nokia And Ericsson To 5G Trials: Here Are All Details

Even though it is struggling to clear its dues, Vodafone-Idea has started 5G trials in the country. The telecom operator has joined hands with Ericsson and Nokia to conduct trials in Pune and Gandhinagar. This development comes two days after Vi announced its Q4 results.

"Recently, we have tested dynamic spectrum sharing as a feature between 4G and 5G with our existing 4g spectrum. We have initiated 5G trials with our major network partners Nokia and Ericsson on the freshly allocated 5G spectrum in Pune and Gandhinagar," the company's MD Ravinder Takkar said.

Vodafone-Idea Deploying 5G Ready Equipment

He said that the company is deploying 5G-ready equipment for both radio and core. He also states that the company has the advantage of 4G equipment, which will help us to upgrade to 5G technology.

"We have made progress in deploying several 5G ready technologies such as massive Mimo, dynamic spectrum refarming, and cloudification of core, etc. They are very much central to our future growth," he further added.

Reliance Jio And Airtel 5G Trials

Leading telecom operator Reliance Jio and Airtel conducted 5G trials in Delhi, NCR, and Mumbai. Notably, Reliance Jio is using its 5G technology, whereas Airtel has used Ericsson's equipment in conducting via a 3.5GHz band.

For the unaware, the Department of Telecommunication has allocated bands for conducting 5G trails. The telecom ministry has given 3.2-3.6-gigahertz (GHz), 700-megahertz (MHz), and 24.25-28.5-GHz bands airwaves to all telecom operators to develop use cases on the next-generation broadband technology.

Recently, the Department of Telecommunication allocated a spectrum to MTNL to conduct trials in Delhi."(The) DoT has allocated spectrum to MTNL for 5G trials in Delhi. It will conduct trials in partnership with C-DoT," the official source said.

On the other hand, the state-run telecom operator BSNL is not conducting 5G trials in the country as it is focussing on 4G services.

It is worth mentioning that Vodafone-Idea is far behind both leading telecom operators in terms of user and market share, but still trying its best to cope with the growing competition, and conducting trails is one of them.