Mumbai: Vodafone Idea (Vi) is in talks with global satcom majors, such as Elon Musk’s Starlink and Amazon Kuiper, for potential partnerships, even as the relative industry straggler doubles down on rolling out its 5G services starting Wednesday to prevent subscriber losses to the two bigger telcos.
Commenting on the recent partnerships of Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio with Starlink, Vi’s chief technology officer Jagbir Singh told ET: “We are in conversations with partners and will share an update at an appropriate time.”
He added that although satcom will enable connectivity in remote areas, “there are still open questions, like the cost of the devices, regulatory approvals on using satellites for terrestrial connectivity, etc.”
Elaborating on the telco’s 5G plans, Singh said that Vodafone Idea is not looking to match the network expansion intensity of its bigger rivals – Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. Instead, Vi is focused on strengthening deployments in focus cities to help arrest subscriber churn.
No comments:
Post a Comment