Vi Partners with Motorola for 5G Support on Phones, But Yet to Launch 5G

Vodafone Idea (Vi) has partnered with Motorola to bring support for its 5G on Motorola smartphones. This is a push by Vi to evolve the 5G smartphone ecosystem. However, it is worth noting that Vi would be deploying 5G NSA (non-standalone) in the same spectrum band that Airtel has, and Airtel’s 5G is already supported by Motorola 5G smartphones (except Motorola Razr 5G). So it is hard to understand what good this partnership is between Vi and Motorola when the former has not even hinted at when it would launch 5G in India.

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Vi said, “To further accelerate the development of the 5G ecosystem in the nation, Vi has partnered with Motorola to ensure seamless 5G connectivity across its extensive 5G smartphone portfolio.” But this is not really changing anything, as Motorola 5G smartphones already support 5G in India. The meaningful thing for Vi to do here would be to launch 5G.

A release from the telco said, “Motorola has successfully tested its latest and most popular smartphone models on 3350 to 3400 MHz spectrum bands on Vi 5G network in New Delhi.” Note that this doesn’t mean that Vi has launched 5G in the city of New Delhi. The telco is only running test networks on which Motorola conducted its tests.

Avneesh Khosla, CMO of Vi, said, “Vi remains committed to playing a significant role in realizing the Digital India dream. We are happy to partner with Motorola in one more step towards our 5G roll out. We believe that the partnership will help develop the 5G device ecosystem, helping more Vi customers upgrade to a superior 5G ready smartphone in time for service roll out”.