Conducts advance trials of cellular energy meters 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 Infrastructures Ltd (Genus Power). Through this partnership, both companies are working together to establish a commercial scale POC (Proof of Concept) of cellular networks in India.
Advanced trials are being conducted at Genus’s R&D facility at Jaipur, Rajasthan around one of the most promising uses of cellular – AMI (Advance Metering Infrastructure). These intensive trials planned not just promise to bring in the age of massive cellular 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, “cellular is the next growth engine 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 cellular deployments commercially viable for enterprises across verticals. We are excited to partner with Genus Power, 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 cellular, We look forward to bring digital transformation in the fields of agriculture, healthcare, education, energy and automotive.”
While in the past, cellular networks were built to connect “people”, cellular is the first of its kind cellular network technology primarily built to connect “things”. Apart from smart utility metering, cellular enables scalable deployments of various smart city use cases e.g. smart street lighting, smart parking etc. It also promises to benefit the 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.
Commenting on jointly working with Vodafone Idea Business Services, Jitendra Kumar Agarwal, Joint Managing Director, Genus Power said, As a leader in the smart metering industry, we are very pleased to be the first in India to conduct advanced trials of cellular enabled meters in partnership with Vodafone Idea Business Services, a global leader.. Genus has conducted 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.”
Genus Power 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 cellular enabled smart meters both for India and the global markets.