Vodafone Idea partnered with Nokia to complete the first phase of a dynamic spectrum refarming in major Indian cities, as part of preparations to migrate to 5G.

The vendor stated the implementation was the world’s largest, though did not reveal the spectrum band or the amount of airwaves involved.

Vodafone Idea CTO Vishant Vora said dynamic spectrum refarming provides it with more network capacity and faster data speeds.

Nokia’s set-up employs its AirScale baseband unit to enable spectrum to be used across different network technologies: it explained the approach automatically adjusts allocations to match data demand.

As part of a RAN contract, Nokia also said it deployed more than 5,500 TD-LTE massive MIMO sites in the 2.5GHz band in eight service areas, citing benefits around coverage, reliability and speed.

Over the past four years, Nokia research found data traffic in the country increased by more than 44-times.