Sunil Mittal-led telecom giant Bharti Airtel, on Monday, announced a strategic partnership with leading IT software services major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for rolling out its 5G broadband network in India.
Tata Group has developed a ‘state-of-the-art’ O-RAN (Open Radio Access Network) based Radio and NSA/SA Core and has integrated a totally indigenous telecom stack, leveraging the Group capabilities and that of its partners. This will be available for commercial development starting January 2022, the two companies said in a press statement.
Airtel will pilot this indigenous solution during 5G rollout. The pilot will begin in January 2022 as per Government of India guidelines, the statement added.
Also read: Airtel will pilot this indigenous5G: A new start to the world/India
“With its world-class technology ecosystem and talent pool, India is well-positioned to build ground breaking solutions and applications for the world. This will also provide a massive boost to India becoming an innovation and manufacturing destination,” said Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO (India and South Asia) at Bharti Airtel.
The 5G solutions, once commercially proven in Airtel’s diverse and brownfield network will open export opportunities for India, which is now the second-largest telecom market in the world after China.
Also read: India to have 330M 5G smartphone subscriptions in 5 years
Airtel is a Board member of the O-RAN Alliance and is committed to explore and implement O-RAN based networks in India. Earlier this year, Airtel became the first telecom company in India to demonstrate 5G over its LIVE network in Hyderabad. The Company has started 5G trials in major cities using spectrum allocated by the Department of Telecom.
Other Indian telecom players such as Reliance Jio have also commenced 5G trials.
What is 5G?
5G is the fifth generation network that will revolutionize the mobile network with high downloading and uploading speed of the data. This minimises the congestion during connectivity. It is a new technology that started hitting the market at the end of 2018 and is expected to expand.
The existing 4G networks cannot meet the consumer's demands for large data transfer at a fast speed. In the future also the need for more data will continue to grow as the number of IoT devices growing rapidly.
