Indian telco Vodafone Idea is testing the use of street furniture for its planned 5G roll out in Bhopal Smart City.

The street furniture is being sued for small cells and aerial fibre deployment as part of a pilot by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

The aim is to make infrastructure more accessible for a quick roll out of the 5G networks. Street furniture such as traffic signal poles, street light poles, smart poles, billboards, direction boards, road signage, foot bridges and city bus shelters are being tested for 5G small cells.

Trai selected Vodafone to conduct the trials at Bhopal. This involved coordination, administrative, permissions, authorisation to use and other support from various entities such as the state government, municipal corporation, police and bus service.

The learnings from this project will in-turn be used for 5G deployment in other smart cities in the country.

In this pilot, Vodafone has demonstrated 5G download speed of 1Gbit/s on mobile handsets at four locations – New Market, Jyoti Square, a Prabhat petrol pump and the interstate bus terminus. Trai has been testing 5G readiness using small cell and aerial fibre in different locations across the country.

Vodafone is also conducting trials on the use of street furniture at Bengaluru Metro Rail, New Delhi International Airport and Deendayal Port Kandla in Gujarat. These follow demonstrations of a range of 5G-based technology and use cases as part of its trials on government-allocated trial spectrum in Pune, Maharashtra and Gandhinaga.

Small cells are network equipment being deployed to enhance 4G network coverage and capacity. Trials are being conducted to test the equipment for 5G network deployments in the future. It uses higher frequencies to provide high broadband speed and the cells are placed closer to users to provide quicker responses.

Trai believes these pilots will be helpful in making cross sectoral infrastructure more accessible for the quick roll out of the 5G networks for telcos. Hundreds of 5G small cells are needed to be installed in a square kilometre to provide good coverage, hence the desire to use existing street furniture, obviating the need for erecting thousands of new towers.

This should not only ensure faster deployment of 5G but also unlock true potential of underused street furniture.

Vodafone Idea is an Aditya Birla Group and Vodafone partnership. It is India’s main telecoms service provider. The company provides pan India voice and data services across 2G, 3G and 4G, and has a 5G-ready platform.