After its rebranding as Vi and the announcement of a major sports sponsorship, there’s even more big news from the former Vodafone Idea. The Indian operator is now announcing the launch of GIGAnet, described as a first-of-its-kind spectrum refarming exercise.
Vi GIGAnet, which integrates the 4G networks of the merged Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, is claimed to be India’s largest network integration carried out via a spectrum refarming exercise. Vi says it has been completed in record time.
Claims for the network include a large spectrum portfolio, huge capacity, and a network built on many principles of 5G architecture and deploying India’s largest AI-powered massive MIMO sites.
The result is, according to comments from Vi in the Indian press, that GIGAnet will offer “India’s largest deployment of universal cloud, making it the strongest, future-ready, new-age, dynamic network of these times, to accommodate the enormous amount of data traffic that the post-Covid world has seen”.
Essentially, this upgrade to an integrated network will expand capacity, and improve speeds and latency. Self-optimisation of parts of the network is also, it seems, part of the offering.
Whatever the reality over the coming weeks and months, as a statement of intent from Vi the rebranding and network integration are pretty impressive. They certainly don’t sound like the actions of a company unsure about its future – as may have been the case before the recent Supreme Court AGR judgement that gave Vi ten years to pay its dues. It will be interesting to see whether end users like what they hear.
