“Airtel‘s strategic partnership with Tata could allow it to reduce its cost of 5G deployment and thus help support the business case for 5G rollout, which has been challenging for operator’s globally. The partnership also aligns well with the government’s Make-in-India push,” Principal at Management Consultancy Analysys Mason Ashwinder Sethi told ET.
Sethi added that the O-RAN partnership and thus the related cost efficiencies in 5G deployment and more performant as well as flexible networks allows Airtel to compete with Jio which has also been pursuing a completely in-house 5G solution through a mix of organic and in-organic approaches.
ET previously reported that Airtel was in talks with local and multinational vendors to locally produce 5G gear and other wireline and wireless networking products.
To strengthen its make in India story, Bharti Enterprises Ltd had recently inked a pact to form a joint venture (JV) with Dixon to manufacture telecom and networking products.
Airtel said that the ‘Made in India’ 5G product and solutions are aligned to global standards, and inter-operate with other products based on standard open interfaces and those defined by the O-RAN Alliance.
Tata Group company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), is bringing its global system integration expertise to bolster the 5G offering besides helping align the end-to-end solution to both 3GPP and O-RAN standards.
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, Airtel said in a statement.
