Vodafone Idea, Genus Power Infra Conducting NB-IoT Trial in India

Vodafone Idea Business Services (VIBS), the enterprise arm of Vodafone Idea Ltd., country’s largest telco, has announced its strategic partnership with Genus Power Infra today. Through this partnership both companies are working together to establish a commercial scale POC (Proof of Concept) of NB-IoT networks in India.

Advanced trials are being conducted at Genus’s R&D facility at Jaipur, Rajasthan around one of the most promising use of NB-IoT - AMI (Automatic Metering Infrastructure). These intensive trials planned not just promise to bring in the age of massive IoT deployments in the country but also promises to take ahead the government’s mission of Digital India & Make in India initiatives.

Thrilled by this venture, Nick Gliddon, Chief Enterprise Business Officer, Vodafone Idea said, “Narrowband IoT is the next growth engine in the IoT space which allows greater network coverage, improved battery life of 10 years plus for devices, and the ability to slice and partition the network for specific use case, to make massive IoT deployments commercially viable for enterprises across verticals. We are excited to partner with Genus Power Infra, a leader in energy meter manufacturing and look forward to bring alive more exciting deployments and projects which will help build a better digital enabled India and make truly smart cities a reality soon. With the power of NBIoT, we look forward to bringing digital transformation in the fields of agriculture, healthcare, utilities (energy, water & gas distribution) and smart city applications”

While in the past, cellular networks were built to connect “people”, Narrowband IoT is the first of its kind cellular network technology primarily built to connect “things”. Apart from smart utility metering, NB-IoT enables scalable deployments of various smart city use cases e.g. smart street lighting, smart parking etc. It also promises to benefit agriculture industry in rural areas, giving rise to new crop monitoring systems, automated feeding for crops and herds all helping to shape the connected farm of the future. This is apart from its myriad use in health and patient monitoring, people and asset tracking which is already positioning NB-IoT as the leading standard for IoT.

Commenting on jointly working with Vodafone Idea Business Services, Jitendra Kumar Agarwal, Joint Managing Director, Genus Power Infra said, ”As a leader in the smart metering industry, we are very pleased to be the first in India to conduct advanced trials of NB-IoT enabled meters in partnership with Vodafone Idea Business Services, a global leader in IoT. Genus has conducted NB-IoT trials globally and has been a part of the digitization and power reforms phase in India. We are committed to supply smart and sustainable solutions to the power sector in the country.”

Vodafone Plc has earlier launched NB-IoT networks in many countries including Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Australia, Netherlands, South Africa etc. and is the global leader in managed IoT, with 74 million plus connections and network and services platform supporting a wide range of business-critical applications.

Genus Power Infra is a pioneer in AMI and therefore was an apt ally for such initiative in India. Genus has been an exporter of smart energy meters particularly to SEA / Africa and is also planning to commercially produce NB-IoT enabled smart meters both for India and the global markets.