Vi Partners Larsen & Toubro for Trials of Smart City Solutions on 5G

Leading telecom operator, Vodafone Idea Limited (VIL) and Smart World & Communication business of leading Engineering & Construction conglomerate Larsen & Toubro have partnered, for a pilot project to test 5G-based Smart City solutions, as part of its on going 5G trials on Govt. allocated 5G spectrum. 

The companies will collaborate to test and validate 5G use cases built on IoT, Video AI technologies leveraging L&T’s Smart City platform – Fusion, addressing the challenges of urbanisation, safety & security and offering smart solutions to the citizens, in a pilot to be conducted in Pune. 

Commenting on the 5G trials and partnership, Abhijit Kishore, Chief Enterprise Business Officer, Vodafone Idea Limited, said, “Telecommunications solutions are the backbone of building smart and sustainable cities. The advent of 5G technology opens whole new opportunities to address challenges of urban growth and provide end-to-end solutions to support sustainable creation of Smart Cities, in the future. Vi is happy to partner with Larsen & Toubro to test 5G based Smart City solutions and utilise our mutual expertise to find solutions that can help shape cities of the future.” 

“In this constantly-evolving world, we are seeing an exponential rise in demand for smarter and more intelligent solutions and L&T Smart World is committed towards leveraging the latest technological innovations in the IoT and Telecommunications areas to benefit society at large. We are excited to partner with Vodafone Idea to bring to the table our experience, of having successfully executed several smart solutions across Indian cities, to develop customised, IoT-driven 5G solutions for various industry and enterprise verticals”, said Mr. J D Patil, Whole Time Director & Senior Executive Vice President (Defence & Smart Technologies, L&T). “This specific initiative is one of L&T’s portfolio of connected services that leverage 5G’s strengths to gather intelligence to provide value added and actionable insights in the digital and connected services domain, including healthcare where timely communication of critical patient health status to healthcare professionals can save lives,” he added. 

The partnership between Vi and Larsen & Toubro aims to trial several 5G based use cases that cover 5G services such as enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (uRLLC) and Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC). It will help to analyse performance requirements of Smart city applications and business models in 5G, design and implement 5G based Smart & Safe city applications and use data analytics tools to visualise and analyse the trial results. 

Vi Business has been a steadfast provider for the Smart Cities with its range of innovative IoT, Mobility, Fixed Line data, Business Communication and Cloud Solutions.Vi has deployed its 5G trial in a setup of end-to-end captive network of Cloud Core, new generation Transport and Radio Access Network, in Pune city. In its initial test results Vi has achieved peak speed in excess of 3.7 Gbps with very low latency on the mmWave spectrum band. These speeds were achieved with state-of-the-art equipment in 5G Non-Standalone network architecture and using NR Radios. 

Vi has been allocated 26 GHz and 3.5 GHz spectrum in the mmWave band by the DoT, for their 5G network trials and use cases. Vi has also achieved peak download speeds of up to 1.5 Gbps in 3.5 Ghz band 5G trial network with its OEM partners. 

The high speed and low latency characteristics of 5G network enables capabilities such as improved surveillance and video streaming/broadcast to permit the evolution of 5G smart cities and smart factories. Smart City and Industry 4.0 will accelerate with 5G deployment and usher in new era of Digital India.