Mavenir negotiates potential 5G deals with Indian carriers: Report
Mavenir aims to start supplying its locally made O-RAN radios in the coming months
U.S.-based O-RAN provider Mavenir said it is in talks to provide 5G gear to Indian carriers including Vodafone Idea, local newspaper ETTelecom reported.
The U.S. firm was expecting to start supplying its made-in-India 4G and 5G O-RAN radios in the coming months, according to Sanjay Bakaya, country head and regional VP for India and Asia at Mavenir.
“These engagements are long drawn and the gestation period is usually around 9-12 months. We are pretty much in engagement with everyone. We are not that far away from the standpoint of working with them [telcos] in 5G,” the executive told ETTelecom.
Local carriers Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have awarded multi-year 5G equipment agreements to European vendors Ericsson and Nokia. The report also noted that these two carriers are also said to be working with Korean vendor Samsung Electronics, while Vodafone Idea did not yet select its provider of 5G gear.
“We are working with all the telcos in India for sure,” Bakaya added.
The executive also highlighted that Mavenir is seeing room for the development of O-RAN in the country, mainly for brownfield O-RAN deployments.
“We are working towards deploying brownfield. India would be certainly taking the center stage or really the lead in building a large-scale Open RAN network from a brownfield standpoint,” he said.
Bakaya noted that Mavenir is aiming at becoming an end-to-end 5G systems integrator for brownfield deployments.
Mavenir had recently set up its manufacturing unit in Pune to produce 2G, 4G, and 5G O-RAN for its OpenBeam portfolio in India, suited for Indian and international frequency bands.
The first telco to launch 5G in India was Bharti Airtel, which has activated its 5G services in eight cities with plans to progressively cover the entire country by March 2024. Some of the cities where Airtel already offers 5G include Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi and Bangalore.
Meanwhile, Reliance Jio Infocomm recently announced the launch of the beta trial of its 5G services in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Varanasi.
Vodafone Idea said that the launch of 5G services in the country will depend on several factors such as the evolution of use cases, customer demand and competitive dynamics.
The government of India said it expected over 200 Indian cities to get 5G services in the next six months. According to government officials, 5G services could be available in 80-90% of the country in the next 2 years.
