Vocal for local is getting louder—on a ‘made in India’ 5G network no less. Following in the footsteps of mobile services market leader Reliance Jio, rival Airtel is also now aiming to develop an indigenous 5G network in the country.
Its partner in the venture is no lightweight—the Tata group. On Monday evening, Bharti Airtel announced a strategic partnership with Tata group, involving its state of the art O-RAN based Radio & NSA/SA Core and integrated telecom stack. This will be available for commercial development starting Jan 2022, according to a statement.
The project involves Tata group company TCS which will help align the end-to-end solution to both 3GPP and O-RAN standards, as both network and equipment are increasingly embedded into software. Airtel is expected to pilot and deploy this indigenous solution as part of its 5G rollout plans in India and start the pilot by early next year.
Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India and South Asia) Bharti Airtel said, “We are delighted to join forces with the Tata Group to make India a global hub for 5G and allied technologies. With its world-class technology ecosystem and talent pool, India is well-positioned to build cutting edge solutions and applications for the world. This will also provide a massive boost to India becoming an innovation and manufacturing destination.”
“We are committed to building a world-class networking equipment and solutions business to address these opportunities in networking space,” added TCS COO N. Ganpathy Subramaniam.
The rollout of 5G services in India was delayed for several reasons: The pandemic, a delay in release and auction of spectrum bandwidths, and the immense expense telecom operators will incur in the process. However, trials have been permitted by the government since last month, and it is expected that India’s first 5G next-generation services will roll out by next summer.
There were worries that 5G rollout expenses would go up considering that Chinese major Huawei, supposed to have the best and most inexpensive technology in 5G, would be kept out of India’s 5G implementation due to geopolitical and security reasons. Alternatives like Ericsson and Nokia are expected to be costlier.
Mukesh Ambani had, at the last Reliance AGM, announced that its Jio service would be rolling out its own indigenously developed 5G technology.
