According to a top executive, Vodafone Idea, which will begin a network expansion exercise in the next two to three months after a successful follow-on offer, is in negotiations with Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson to gain new orders for 4G and 5G equipment.

"Our partner, Vodafone Idea, and we are now having conversations. We expect to help them with their rollouts when they introduce 5G," Nitin Bansal, Managing Director of Ericsson India, stated in an interview with Moneycontrol.

Ericsson already supplies 5G equipment to Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio. Additionally, the two telecom providers obtain 5G equipment from Nokia.

Vodafone Idea is negotiating 5G partnerships with vendors and plans to begin putting out 5G in six months. But the company's main goal is to begin rolling out 4G coverage and capacity in a few months, which it claimed would help it stop losing customers. In order to compete with competitors Jio and Airtel, the business, also known as Vi, plans to finish a significant portion of its coverage expansion in 12 to 15 months.

Nokia of Finland powers 4G in nine circles for Vodafone Idea, while Ericsson powers it in eight. Vodafone has ZTE's equipment spread across five circles, while Huawei's equipment is spread across seven. ZTE circles are all shared by other suppliers.

Bansal stated that while the business is optimistic about the Indian market, which is still seeing a rapid development of 5G networks, it anticipates a slowdown in the rate of rollouts this year due to the quick network deployments by Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio.

"We remain extremely optimistic about the Indian market." That is crucial to us. It still appears promising when considering the rise in data and the increase in customers, according to Bansal. "It will be beneficial in India, but I don't expect the same level of rollout as we saw last year."