Mavenir expects pan-India commercial deal from Vodafone Idea by year end
Mint in Barcelona, on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress. The technology provider intends to meet the demand from Indian as well as global carriers from its India plant. The first pilot of the technology for Vodafone Idea is being conducted in Jalandhar, Punjab to test the equipment and functioning of the network such that it meets all the key performance indicators of the existing networks, while in parallel they're scaling up the number of sites to cover the entire state.
“We have moved all the manufacturing of all the radios to India, from Mexico and Florida," said Mavenir president and chief executive officer Pradeep Kohli. "They're manufactured by Jabil in India, and I will need six to nine months to scale up. But, we’re prepared to deploy whenever the customer wants." OpenRAN technology helps telecom operators to source hardware and software from different suppliers, thus ending dependence on single vendors.
Unlike Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, which opted for traditional 5G technologies from Nokia and Ericsson, Vodafone Idea is the only carrier to look at deploying OpenRAN technology for commercial purposes. Vodafone Idea is yet to launch 5G services commercially despite having tested out the service in two locations—Delhi and Pune. Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of Aditya Birla Group and one of the main promoters of Vodafone Idea, said in November 2023 that the telco will look to introduce 5G services this year.
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