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Nokia, Bharti Airtel claim success in 5G NSA Cloud RAN trial
Global comms tech provider successfully completes first 5G non-standalone Cloud RAN trial with leading Indian telco to deliver higher levels of service innovation, higher network automation, flexibility and efficient scaling of resources
Adding to the comms tech provider’s portfolio of references in the domain of 5G cloud radio access networks (RANs), and marking what is said to be a significant milestone in the Indian telco’s network evolution, Nokia and Bharti Airtel have revealed they have successfully completed a 5G non-standalone (NSA) Cloud RAN trial.
The project, a first for Nokia, is said to support Airtel’s aim of delivering what it believes will be a superior customer experience using high-performing networks. It is regarded by the telco as able to deliver higher levels of service innovation, higher network automation, flexibility and efficient scaling of resources to support end-user services.
Airtel added that it also marks a notable significant milestone in its overall cloudification journey, supporting its ambition of bringing cloud networking benefits such as scalability and agility to its network.
The trial took place in an over-the-air environment using 3.5 GHz spectrum for 5G and 2100 MHz for 4G. Data calls were successfully performed with commercial user devices over Airtel’s commercial network, achieving a throughput of over 1.2 Gbps. The trial also made use of Nokia’s RAN software for virtualised distributed unit (vDU) and virtualised centralised unit (vCU) running on x86 hardware with a communications-as-a-service (CaaS) layer.
The trial also used Nokia’s L1 acceleration, designed to enable enhanced power efficiency, and is said to have shown the benefits of using common RAN software with the purpose-built part of the network through support of Nokia anyRAN technology, which is described as an open approach to building future-ready radio access networks together with an ecosystem of industry partners. It’s designed to give companies including enterprises a collaborative advantage by offering them more flexibility in their choice of cloud infrastructure software, hardware and technology suppliers.
Users can evolve their networks to a hybrid RAN approach with both Cloud RAN and purpose-built RAN deployments coexisting, delivering a consistent, high-quality performance. This, assured Nokia, would enable common functionality and performance across the hybrid network.
“This successful Cloud RAN trial is a significant step forward in our consistent efforts to integrate the latest and most efficient technologies into our network and leverage these to deliver brilliant customer experiences,” said Bharti Airtel chief technology officer Randeep Sekhon. “This partnership with Nokia has enabled us to pioneer innovative solutions to upgrade our capabilities in 5G.”
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Tommi Uitto, Nokia president of mobile networks, added: “This successful trial with our long-term partner, Bharti Airtel, supports their ambitions for building scalable, agile and highly automated networks.
“Nokia’s approach to Cloud RAN means that our customers can flexibly evolve to Cloud RAN with choices in cloud infrastructure and datacentre hardware. This will drive efficiency, innovation, openness and scale in their RAN evolution.”
