Vodafone Indea secured frequencies in a recent 5G auction
Indian telecom operator Vodafone Idea is focusing on potential partnerships with the aim of expanding its enterprise solutions following the acquisition of 5G frequencies, local newspaper The Economic Times reported.
“The 5G ecosystem is still evolving. Our intent is to work across industry, work across different use cases to try to see if we can stimulate and work with users to find ways to accelerate the adoption of use cases,” Arvind Nevatia, chief enterprise business officer at Vodafone Idea, was quoted as saying.
The executive noted that the telco will continue to collaborate with enterprise customers and partners to develop 5G use cases for real-world deployments.
Vodafone Idea is currently working with partners and customers to deploy private 4G LTE solutions for Indian enterprises, according to the report.
“One of the key aspects of a 5G network is that it provides very high capacities and supports massive machine type communications. This will fuel various Industry 4.0 vertical applications thus it is very useful for the future of IoT. We will be working closely with the ecosystem to build our IoT roadmap,” Nevatia added.
The telco secured 5G frequencies in a recent 5G spectrum auction in India, which concluded on August 1. Indian carriers purchased a total $19 billion worth of spectrum in the process.
Reliance Jio walked away with the most spectrum, having spent $11 billion. Airtel won spectrum worth $5.4 billion, while Vodafone Idea received spectrum worth $2.4 billion. Finally, Adani purchased spectrum worth approximately $27 million.
“We have successfully acquired mid band 5G spectrum in our 17 priority circles and mmWave 5G spectrum in 16 circles, which will enable us to offer a superior 5G experience to our customers,” Vodafone Idea recently said in a regulatory filing.
Vodafone Idea also acquired additional 4G spectrum in the circles or regions of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab.
The country’s Telecommunications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has recently requested that telecom service providers prepare for the launch of 5G across India. With the official assignment of 5G frequencies, which occurred earlier this week, Indian operators can start the work of rolling out 5G networks.
