The company says the network will serve 8.7 million customers in and around Bangalore – now called Bengaluru – in central southern India. The city is home to much of the country’s high-technology industry.
The operator has picked Nokia to supply the cloud packet core network, supported by Nokia CloudBand software.
Vodafone India’s technology director Vishant Vora said the cloud approach “will enable us to scale faster by improving business productivity and network operations”. It would help the company provide “a more reliable and superior network experience to our customers”.
An additional benefit is lower power per customer, he added.
Samar Mittal, account director at Nokia India, said the cloud packet core would better handle mobile broadband growth. “Our technology also enables Vodafone to deliver the best-in-class mobile broadband experience to the customer and lives up to our joint social responsibility to reduce carbon emissions.”
A cloud approach will allow the network to deliver advanced services such as internet of things (IoT) and machine type communications, and it will be able to handle the complex multi-vendor and multi-technology network efficiently.