Airtel, Mavenir team up for OpenRAN-led 5G trials

Bharti Airtel has partnered with US-based Mavenir Systems for Open Radio Access Network (OpenRAN) -based fifth generation or 5G field trials in the mmWave and middleband in Chandigarh, confirming telco’s commitment to open technology approach.

“Airtel will conduct 5G trials with Mavenir in the Chandigarh tri-city in the coming weeks in the 3500 MHz and millimeter wave (mmWave) bands,” said one industry source, adding that the partnership will further allow the telecommunications company to test a vendor-neutral ecosystem.

Sunil Mittal-powered telco is one of the first members of the O-RAN Alliance since 2018, along with AT&T, Orange, Vodafone Group, China Mobile and Deutsche Telekom, and is at the forefront of innovation-driven open architecture. Rival Reliance Jio, an avid advocate of open technology, is also a member of the group.

The alliance includes the rollout of captive 5G standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) modes for both core and radio networks in urban and rural areas of the three cities.

Query to Bharti Airtel did not elicit a response.

Recently, an open architecture-based approach has emerged in India with established companies such as Reliance Jio testing internal radio networks, in addition to partnerships with NXP and Qualcomm, while the Vodafone group, which jointly operates Vodafone Idea, led by Himanshu Kapania , in the country’s three-player market, has partnered with Korean Samsung and Japanese NEC.

In August this year, Bharti Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal said the telecommunications company continues to lead the OpenRAN initiative in India by collaborating with the “best companies” such as Mavenir, Red Hat, Intel and Qualcomm. It has also entered into a partnership with the Tata group to implement locally developed open network.

In 2020, Airtel Rakuten’s subsidiary Altiostar implemented Open Virtual Radio Access Network (vRAN), while rival Jio in August last year said they had developed and tested a native disaggregated 5G OpenRAN solution that achieved a 1 Gigabit per second milestone.

However, telecommunications companies switching to non-proprietary networks based on an estimated total ownership savings (TCO) of up to 35% would spoil the dominance of players like Swedish Ericsson and Finnish Nokia, according to analysts.

OpenRAN uses standard software and hardware components and provides additional savings in capital investment (capex) and operating expenses (opex), as it allows the implementation of virtualized features with capacity and demand adjustment dynamically.

In May this year, the telecommunications department’s WPC (Wireless Planning and Coordination) wing allocated airwaves to Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea in the 700 Mhz, 3500 Mhz and 26 Ghz bands for a period of six months for next-generation network trials.

Meanwhile, the department has allowed a six-month extension of service operators to conduct 5G field trials until May 2022 to develop locally relevant 5G utility cases. MPT