In order to enhance the current 4G network in India and to get ready for 5G capabilities, Airtel has joined forces with Nokia. Bharti Airtel has signed a $1 billion (nearly ₹7,636 crores) deal with Nokia. It is a multi-year deal in which Nokia will deploy 5G-ready solutions across nine circles in the country.
Nokia will deploy around 300,000 radio units for Bharti Airtel by 2022. This will lay the foundation for the 5G infrastructure for Airtel in the future. Nokia supplied networks that would give Airtel the best possible platform when the 5G networks are launched across the country, with their low latency and faster speeds.
“The deal will also include Nokia’s RAN equipment, including its AirScale Radio Access, AirScale BaseBand, and NetAct OSS solution, which will help Airtel to monitor and manage its network effectively. Nokia Global Services will also play a crucial role in the installation, planning, and deployment of the project, which will be executed via the cloud-based Nokia Delivery Platform,” said Nokia.
India is a big telecom market. It is estimated that users in India could reach up to 920 million by the year 2025 of which 88 million users are expected to adopt 5G technology too. So it is very important for Airtel to modernize its infrastructure to take a big pie of this growing market. It also a significant deal for Nokia too. In China Nokia already lost to Huawei and ZTE in the race to supply 5G equipment to the three Chinese telcos – China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom.
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