VMware noted it is currently working with Indian carriers Bharti Airtel, Jio and Vodafone Idea
VMware expects to see wide-scale deployment of O-RAN-based 5G in India from 2025, local newspaper The Economic Times reported, citing Sanjay Uppal, senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s service provider and edge business unit.
The executive noted that Indian telecom operators will run large-scale proof of concepts (PoCs) and technology trials of O-RAN in 2024.
“I expect there will be some [O-RAN] announcements in 2024 but not wide-scale deployment yet in India,” the executive said.
Uppal said VMware is currently working with Indian carriers Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio Infocomm and Vodafone Idea. “Indian telcos are in the initial phase of 5G deployment and will soon think of monetization of their network,” he said.
Uppal also highlighted that VMware is in talks with Indian conglomerates and large manufacturers to help them deploy their private 5G and cloud networks.
In May, Bharti Airtel had selected U.S. company Mavenir for the deployment of O-RAN systems as part of its current nationwide 5G rollout. According to previous reports, Bharti Airtel is deploying Mavenir’s 4G and 5G O-RAN technology at some 2,500 sites in rural parts of India and plans to expand this to 10,000 sites nationwide.
The two companies have been already working together on O-RAN developments. In April 2022, Bharti Airtel had carried out what it claimed to be India’s first O-RAN-based live 5G network validation in partnership with Mavenir.
Rival telco Reliance Jio Infocomm has developed a complete stack in-house leveraging O-RAN technology.
On the other hand, Vodafone Idea is also running proof of concepts (PoCs) for vRAN and O-RAN technologies with Samsung and Mavenir, respectively. Vodafone Idea previously said it would potentially consider the deployment of O-RAN networks once the technology is mature enough.
“I can say that at Vodafone Idea, we are more than happy to do the trial and pilots, and to deploy if it [O-RAN] is actually having the feature parity and stability, and it’s making the capex and opex sense. We have done the trials. We are going to do more pilots,” Jagbir Singh, CTO of Vodafone Idea had said.
“Is there a need for Open RAN and virtualized RAN? The answer is yes. But are we there yet? To my mind, no,” Singh added.
