Vodafone Idea, Ericsson partner to trial 5G healthcare use cases in rural locations

Vodafone Idea (Vi) and Swedish telecom equipment vendor Ericsson Tuesday teamed up for developing 5G-powered healthcare use cases in rural locations of India using the trial spectrum allocated in the 3.5GHz mid-band and 26GHz mmWave band.

“Based on the high data speed, low latency, and reliability of 5G, a doctor located in an urban center can actually carry out an ultrasound scan on a patient who is in a remote rural location,” the companies in a joint statement said.

“This is being trialed by Vi using Ericsson’s 5G infrastructure to showcase the power of 5G to reach healthcare to remote parts of the country.”

Vi is currently using Ericsson’s 5G gear which includes Ericsson Radios and Ericsson Dual-Mode Core based on cloud-native technology comprising 5G SA, 5G NSA, and LTE packet core functions.

Both Vi and its rival Bharti Airtel have shifted their focus to enterprises across various industries for 5G use cases, and have started forming alliances with technology vendors and companies to test new solutions using the 5G trial spectrum.

Vi on Monday joined hands with homegrown startups — Vizzbee Robotics Solution and Tweek Labs — to test 5G-based solutions on aerial traffic management and motion capture system.

While Airtel said it is collaborating with global consulting and technology companies such as Accenture, AWS, Cisco, Ericsson, Google Cloud, Nokia, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to work with brands such as Apollo Hospitals, Flipkart, and other manufacturing companies to test 5G based solutions.

“Vi has developed a 5G ready network which builds on India’s fastest Vi GIGAnet network verified by Ookla. With our 5G trials now, we are leveraging the power of 5G to provide healthcare access to remote parts of the country, amongst a range of other use cases for enterprises and consumers,” said Jagbir Singh, CTO, Vi.

As part of the ongoing demonstrations, Vi and Ericsson also demonstrated the Enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and fixed wireless access (FWA) applications with 5G.

Meanwhile, Airtel last month had conducted India’s first rural 5G trial with Ericsson and had showcased eMBB as well as FWA services using the trial spectrum.

According to the DoT, the three incumbents — Jio, Airtel, and Vodafone Idea have to conduct trials in urban, semi-urban, and rural areas to ensure proliferation of 5G services across the length and breadth of the country.

The telecom companies have recently asked the government to extend the trial period by one year to November 2022, reasoning the lack of readiness of their 5G partners.

“Over time, we expect more enterprise-related use cases to come up leveraging the benefits of 5G in sectors like healthcare, manufacturing, education, etc. The flexible Dual Mode Core set by Ericsson with Vi in Pune is helping enterprises leverage the network to deploy use cases like Remote video monitoring, Telemedicine, Digital twin, AR/VR, etc. during the ongoing trials,” said Amarjeet Singh, Vice President, Ericsson.

An Ericsson 5G Business Compass report estimates that the total 5G-enabled B2B opportunity for Indian telecom operators across 10 industries would be $17 billion by 2030.

The report finds that industries that are expected to leverage 5G for their digitalization include healthcare, manufacturing, energy, and utilities, automotive, and public safety.