Pushing India’s digital revolution further and realising the need for being a step ahead amid rapidly declining consumer base, Bharti Airtel has announced that it will soon begin testing 5G ready fronthaul solution from Nokia.
This trial is part of Bharti Airtel’s strategy to make its network future ready. Nokia’s solution under this trial has the potential to improve the performance of Airtel’ existing network even as it prepares the network for 5G and to meet the future demand. It allows service providers to meet the growing demand for bandwidth and enables to deliver 5G services.
Randeep Sekhon, CTO at Bharti Airtel, said, “Airtel has always set the benchmark when it comes to roll-out of latest network technologies. The upgrade of the transport network is also essential to cater to the booming consumption of mobile broadband services and enable world-class digital services. Nokia is our longstanding partner and we look forward to their support in our journey towards 5G.”
Fronthaul is the link between baseband unit and radio, and modernization of this part of the transport network is essential to deliver high-speed and low latency of 5G services. Nokia’s converged fronthaul transport solution helps bring down fiber requirement through multi-channel bi-directional transmission on a single fiber. The solution supports multiple interfaces, including Common Public Radio Interfaces (CPRI) and enhanced Common Public Radio Interfaces (eCPRI).
Sanjay Malik, who heads Nokia’s India business, said “We look forward to this trial with Bharti Airtel, which is a crucial step towards preparing the networks for 5G. The ring architecture will help in adding resiliency to the network and ensure that the network is able to meet the ever-growing bandwidth demand of their customers.”
