Vi Targets to Bring 5G in 17 Circles in Next 5 Months

Global telecom firm Vodafone and Aditya Birla Group backed Vi (Vodafone Idea Ltd) is getting ready for 5G launch, as they had recently partnered with Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung for 4G expansion, upgradation and 5G deployment. 

While Airtel and Jio rolled out 5G in October 2022, Vi with its financial struggles is yet to enter 5G space. Though Vi had several trials of 5G with multiple vendors. In February 2023, the Indian government converted debt-ridden Vi’s dues into equity, which made GoI to own 33.5% stake of Vi, as the single largest shareholder. After that some rumors came that BSNL may merge with Vi or BSNL may use Vi's 4G network - however those did not happen, thankfully. 

In September 2024, Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, increased his stake in Vi by purchasing 1.86 crore shares. His investment vehicle, Pilani Investment and Industries Corporation also acquired 30 lakh shares. This move came as Vi is set to raise Rs 25,000 crore in debt and Rs 24,000 crore in equity funding. Vi had also approached state-owned lenders Power Finance Corp. (PFC) and REC Ltd for loans to meet medium-term funding requirements.

On October 15, 2024 at the inauguration of IMC and ITUWTSA 2024 Kumar Mangalam Birla said that fundraise has helped Vi to kick-start its capex cycle. He also praised the support from Narendra Modi-led Indian government which would help Vi to do its part in realizing India's digital destiny.

In an interview with ETTelecom, Vi CTO, Jagbir Singh has explained the company's plan for the future - Vi targets to roll out 5G in 17 circles by March 2025, starting with Delhi and Mumbai. At the same time Vi will expand 4G coverage from 77% to 90%. 

Vi has spectrum over 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz and 2500 MHz bands. Vi will deploy another 95,000 sites with 900MHz band support (presently had 55,000 approx.) to offer best indoor coverage. 

Though commercial 5G launch by Vi was delayed, the company is not sitting idle. They have developed Vi Udyog Shakti - Vi’s suite of 5G-powered solutions aimed at India’s mining sector. Vi has also developed some cutting-edge solution for the micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Both had been demonstrated during India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2024. Vi is also in initial talks with several tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Accenture, IBM to bring AI/ML in telecom. 

For last one year Vi and US-based Mavenir worked together to test Open RAN for 4G and 5G in Jalandhar. But Vi found the initial days of Open RAN were full of hiccups and 'the maturity of openRAN is still not there'. Cost with Open RAN goes higher in comparison with classic or closed RAN system. 

It is expected that Vi will not embrace Open RAN anytime soon, as they picked up incumbent vendors like Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung ditching Chinese vendors like ZTE and Huawei. Also Vi's 5G would be expected to NSA-5G - similar to Airtel's strategy to keep 4G as a core. 

Vi and other Indian operators' commitment to Open RAN lies in the line of strategy of Deutsche Telekom, one of the operators who pioneered Open RAN as it co-founded the xRAN Forum in 2016, which led to the formation of the telco-led O-RAN ALLIANCE in 2018. 

Neubrandenburg was selected for O-RAN Town Pilot by DT in 2021 to test, assess and gain operational experience from a high-power multivendor deployment in a brownfield network. DT partnered with Mavenir, NEC Corporation, Fujitsu, Dell Technologies and Intel Corporation. In June 2021, the first site went live at O-RAN Town with massive MIMO integrated into the live network of Telekom Deutschland GmbH. Deutsche Telekom has announced Open RAN deployment in Germany with Nokia and Fujitsu in February 2023. In December 2023, DT announced to have approx 3,000 Open RAN sites across Germany by 2026. After almost a year, in October 2024 the plan has been shifted to 2027e i.e. estimated anytime in 2027. 

Canada's leading carrier Telus was heavily dependent of Huawei for equipment supply, but as government restrict use of Chinese equipments, Telus has to shift their strategy to Open-RAN. Telus is testing Open RAN with Samsung's software and massiv MIMO radios, Ontario based Bluewaves Mobility Innovation (BMI)'s FDD radios, HPE servers equipped with Intel's Sapphire Rapids EE chips, Wind River's cloud infrastructure platform. Sources tell these Sapphire Rapids EE is more customized than a standard processor. To cope with a resource-hungry RAN task called forward error correction (FEC), it includes a hardware-dependent "accelerator."