Bharti Airtel and Qualcomm Technologies have announced collaboration for accelerating 5G in India. Recently, Airtel became India's first telco to demonstrate 5G over a LIVE commercial network in the city of Hyderabad, Telangana.
Through Airtel’s network of vendors and device partners, it will utilise the Qualcomm SG RAN Platforms to rollout virtualised and open RAN-based 5G networks.
The company, as a board member of the O-RAN Alliance, is committed to driving the success of O-RAN and is working with Qualcomm Technologies to explore and implement the O-RAN approach for India.
The flexible and scalable architecture of O-RAN will create new opportunities for small and medium-size businesses to become viable players in the deployment of 5G networks.
In addition, Airtel and Qualcomm Technologies will collaborate to enable a wide array of use cases, including 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) that is designed to deliver broadband connectivity at Gigabit speeds to homes and businesses.
This collaboration also aims to allow a faster rollout of broadband services in a cost-effective and expeditious manner across India for last-mile connectivity challenges.
Airtel 5G solutions including FWA services will be able to deliver multi-gigabit internet speeds wirelessly to customers and open up a wide range of innovations.
For customers, the ultra-fast and low latency of 5G will unlock a digital world of limitless possibilities -- gigabit size file downloads in seconds and 4K video streaming on the go across smartphones and computing devices, immersive technologies such as virtual reality and SMART Homes with connected things.