Bharti Airtel and Tata Group on Monday announced a strategic partnership for implementing 5G networks solutions for India.
Tata Group has developed a O-RAN based Radio & NSA/SA Core and integrated a totally indigenous telecom stack, leveraging the Group capabilities and that of its partners.
This will be available for commercial development starting January next year.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) brings its global system integration expertise and helps align the end-to-end solution to both 3GPP and O-RAN standards, as the network and equipment are increasingly embedded into software.
Airtel will pilot and deploy this indigenous solution as part of its 5G rollout plans in India and start the pilot in January 2022.
These 'Made in India' 5G product and solutions are aligned to global standards, and interoperate with other products based on standard open interfaces and those defined by the O-RAN Alliance.
The 5G solutions, once commercially proven in Airtel's diverse and brownfield network, will open export opportunities for India which is now the second largest telecom market in the world.
Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and CEO for India and South Asia at Bharti Airtel, said 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," he said.
N Ganapathy Subramaniam from the Tata Group/ TCS said: "We are committed to building a world-class networking equipment and solutions business to address these opportunities in networking space."
Airtel is a board member of O-RAN Alliance. Earlier this year, communications solutions provider became the first telecom company in India to demonstrate 5G over its live network in city of Hyderabad.
The company has started 5G trials in major cities using spectrum allocated by the Department of Telecom.
The Tata group's telecom and media enterprises cater to communication requirements of global business houses to SMEs, and from wholesale to home networks. TCS is a member of the O-RAN Alliance.
( With inputs from ANI )
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