April 2, 2025: Espoo, Finland – Nokia and Bharti Airtel are expanding their partnership with the deployment of Nokia’s Packet Core appliance-based and Fixed Wireless Access solutions for providing a better network experience for Airtel’s growing 4G/5G customer base. The solution will help seamlessly integrate 5G and 4G technologies into a single set of servers. Nokia’s FWA will provide additional capacities for home broadband and enterprise-critical application services. Airtel will use Nokia’s automation framework to realise zero-touch service launch and efficient lifecycle management for core network functions to enhance its ability to deliver new services faster while reducing network operational costs.
Using Nokia’s converged Packet Core solution for 5G standalone (SA) readiness, Airtel will continue its evolution toward advanced 5G and simplify its network architecture to meet the ever growing need of data while reducing network operational costs. This will help Airtel optimise its hardware footprint and reduce its cost per bit by utilising appliance-based Packet Core gateways, while maintaining the rest of the network elements in a cloud-native architecture.
The rollout covers network automation in a multi-year deal that spans the majority of Airtel’s service regions across the country. The collaboration entails advancing autonomous networks by utilising GenAI for service orchestration and assurance.
“Nokia’s innovative Packet Core deployment architecture enables critical changes to our network quality and reliability for meeting the fast-rising growth in customer data requirements,” said Airtel CTO, Randeep Sekhon. “This rollout further demonstrates our longstanding success in jointly collaborating to strengthen the overall Airtel customer experience.”
“Nokia and Airtel have a long-standing partnership and we are pleased to bolster its 5G SA readiness,” said Raghav Sahgal, President of Cloud and Network Services at Nokia. “Airtel’s use of Nokia’s Packet Core to build greater network agility and reliability demonstrates how we are both helping customers solve problems and furthering Nokia’s leadership position in the Core space in India and around the world.”
Nokia’s solution provides a pre-integrated and modular server-based configuration for increased flexibility to support a wider range of business and operational deployment models. This allows Airtel to better target new customers and create new revenue streams.
Nokia’s Packet Core solution for Fixed Wireless Access enables additional capacity for home broadband and enterprise-critical application services for the delivery of extreme bandwidth and capacity to customers.
Nokia has an expansive core footprint in Bharti Airtel’s network and already provides several other core technologies including VoLTE (Voice over LTE), HSS (Home Subscriber Server), HLR (Home Location Register), UDM (Unified Data Management) and VoNR (Voice over New Radio), along with MANO (automated Management & Orchestration).
About Bharti Airtel Limited:
Headquartered in India, Airtel is a global communications solutions provider with over 550 million customers in 15 countries across India and Africa. The company also has its presence in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka though its associate entities. The company ranks amongst the top three mobile operators globally and its networks cover over two billion people. Airtel is India’s largest integrated communications solutions provider and the second largest mobile operator in Africa. Airtel’s retail portfolio includes high-speed 4G/5G mobile broadband, Airtel Xstream Fiber that promises speeds up to 1 Gbps with convergence across linear and on-demand entertainment, streaming services spanning music and video, digital payments and financial services. For enterprise customers, Airtel offers a gamut of solutions that includes secure connectivity, cloud and data centre services, cyber security, IoT, Ad Tech and cloud based communication. Within our diversified portfolio, we offer passive infrastructure services through our subsidiary Indus Tower Ltd. For more details visit www.airtel.com
About Nokia
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