
Bharti Airtel-Nokia Tie-up to Strengthen 5G Core Network in India

The Indian telecom giant, Bharti Airtel is collaborating with Nokia to deploy Nokia’s Packet Core appliance-based solutions and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) for a more efficient network experience. This partnership aims to improve network capabilities of Airtel's expanding 4G and 5G customer base.
The key feature of this collaboration is to simplify Airtel’s network infrastructure by integrating the 5G and 4G technologies into a unified set of servers. Nokia’s FWA solutions will strengthen home broadband capacities and critical enterprise services by enhancing the overall network experience for customers. This integration will allow Airtel to deliver new services more efficiently and reduce network operational costs over time. The goal is to streamline network architecture to accommodate increasing data demands while reducing operational costs and optimizing hardware usage.
The rollout of these network upgrades will take place in span multiple years, covering most of Airtel’s service regions across India.
As part of the collaboration, Airtel will also integrate Generative AI (GenAI) to enhance service integration and ensure a more autonomous network management system.
Airtel CTO, Randeep Sekhon stated, “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. This rollout further demonstrates our longstanding success in jointly collaborating to strengthen the overall Airtel customer experience.”
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“Nokia and Airtel have a long-standing partnership and we are pleased to bolster its 5G SA readiness. 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.” Raghav Sahgal, President of Cloud and Network Services at Nokia.