Vodafone Idea to launch 5G by March 2025, starting with Delhi and Mumbai: Report

Vodafone Idea (Vi) plans to launch its 5G services by March 2025, starting with Delhi and Mumbai. The company’s Chief Technology Officer, Jagbir Singh, said they will roll out 5G in 17 regions, focusing on metro cities and major urban areas first, according to a report by The Economic Times.

Vi also aims to increase its 4G coverage to reach 90 per cent of India's population by June 2024. Currently, its 4G network covers about 77 per cent of the population, serving around 1.03 billion people. The company wants to strengthen its network to better compete with Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel.

As part of its revival plan, Vi raised ₹24,000 crore through equity funding, including ₹18,000 crore from a follow-on public offer. Most of this money will be used to improve its 4G network and support the launch of 5G.

Singh is confident that once the network upgrades are done, Vi will stop losing subscribers within a few months.

Vodafone Idea (Vi) is focusing on expanding its 4G network to improve service quality and handle growing demand. The company is leveraging all the available spectrum it has, including bands like 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz, and 2500 MHz.

The company is particularly focused on the 900 MHz band, which offers better coverage, especially in urban areas and indoors. They are significantly increasing the number of cell towers (or "sites") using this spectrum—from 55,000 to 150,000. So far, 50,000 of these new sites are ready, and the company expects to complete the remaining 50,000 within the next nine months.

Vi has partnered with major tower providers like Indus Towers, ATC, and Tower Vision, and there are no delays in the project execution. Vi aims to start using the additional towers from November, ensuring a smoother rollout.

However, Vi didn’t comment on whether it has cleared outstanding payments to tower companies like Indus Towers.

The report suggests Vi will not renew network contracts with Chinese-origin vendors as it upgrades its infrastructure. The company has floated a request for proposals (RFP) to replace ageing Chinese equipment but plans to phase it out over time, rather than replacing everything in the next two years.

In a bid to modernise its network, Vi is exploring a virtualised radio access network (vRAN) and has partnered with South Korean tech giant Samsung in the Karnataka, Bihar, and Punjab regions. However, their experiments with openRAN (a type of network technology that allows more flexibility) haven't been promising. Despite partnering with US-based Mavenir and deploying openRAN in 25 sites in Jalandhar, the results have been disappointing, with higher costs and technical issues.