Nokia has announced a collaboration with Bharti Ltd (Airtel) to roll out an advanced optical transport network. The company said that this network is designed to offer increased capacity, enhanced reliability, and cost-effectiveness, ultimately benefitting Airtel's customer base.
As part of the deal, Airtel will incorporate Nokia's 1830 PSS-x OTN switches in its National Long-Distance Network, connecting major Indian cities.
Telecom gear-maker claimed that this expansion is set to allow Bharti to offer improved and more reliable broadband services, gearing up for emerging technological applications.
Nokia's OTN (Optical Transport Network) solution will enable Bharti Airtel to upgrade its existing transport switching infrastructure throughout its extensive Indian network. According to Nokia, this upgrade is expected to meet the rising traffic demands while simultaneously boosting network performance and reliability.
“As a global leader in OTN technology, our solutions will assist Airtel in expanding the capacity and capabilities of Bharti's optical transport network. This expansion is driven by increasing bandwidth demands from enterprise and hyperscaler segments,” said Chandan Kumar, Head of Optical Network Business Centre, Nokia India.
“It will also ensure service level performance that aligns with Airtel customers' strict SLAs,” he added.
Nokia said that the push on 5G networks and the drive for nationwide broadband connectivity in India are escalating demands on Communications Service Providers (CSPs).
“These demands include enhancing backhaul transport for denser 5G mobile networks and providing wholesale connectivity for emerging segments like smart grids, datacenter interconnect (DCI), and various business services.”
According to Finnish firm, to manage this surge in traffic, it's crucial to upgrade transport networks. This upgrade involves enhancing transport capacity and bandwidth efficiency with high-capacity OTN switching and employing additional fiber spectrum, including L-band wavelengths.
Earlier, in August 2022, Nokia had secured a deal with Bharti Airtel for the deployment of a 5G radio access network (RAN) in India. The multi-year agreement followed the conclusion of 5G spectrum auctions and the allocation of pan-India spectrum to Bharti Airtel.
As part of this deal, Nokia is supplying equipment from its AirScale Base Station portfolio, including modular and scalable baseband and high-capacity 5G massive MIMO radios. This deployment marked nearly two decades of collaboration between Nokia and Bharti Airtel across various generations of RAN technologies, from 2G to 5G.
