Nokia has announced the successful completion of its first 5G non-standalone (NSA) Cloud RAN trial in partnership with Bharti Airtel (Airtel) in India. In line with providing excellent customer experience through high network performance, this initiative is consistent with Airtel’s goal. The trial will foster service innovation, network automation, flexibility and efficient resource scaling for end-user services.
During the trial—performed over the air using a spectrum of 3.5 GHz for 5G and 2100 MHz for 4G—data calls were made successfully from commercial user devices on Airtel’s network at a rate exceeding 1.2 Gbps. Nokia used RAN software for virtualized Distributed Unit (vDU) and virtualized Centralized Unit (vCU) running on x86 hardware with a CaaS layer.
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In addition, this trial also utilized Nokia’s L1 acceleration to improve power efficiency and support the benefits associated with common RAN software that is offloaded on purpose-built parts of the hybrid network. Consequently, functionality and performance were shared across all networks. This trial represents an important milestone in Airtel’s journey towards cloudification and aligns with the operator’s ambition of realizing the advantages of cloud networking, such as scalable and agile networks.
Nokia's anyRAN approach aims to collude with business associates in order to establish futuristic radio access networks, which give wireless carriers and companies flexibility in selecting cloud infrastructure software, hardware, and technology suppliers. This allows operators to transition to a hybrid RAN approach with a blend of Cloud RAN and purpose-built RAN deployments, thus, co-existing together while maintaining consistent high-quality performance.
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Randeep Sekhon, Chief Technology Officer at Bharti Airtel, stated that the successful Cloud RAN trial represents a significant step in their ongoing efforts to integrate the latest technologies into the network and enhance customer experiences. The partnership with Nokia has enabled them to pioneer innovative solutions for upgrading their capabilities in 5G.
Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia, stated, “This successful trial with our long-term partner, Bharti Airtel, supports their goals of building scalable, agile and highly automated networks. With Nokia’s Cloud RAN approach, our customers can evolve flexibly through choices they make on their cloud infrastructure as well as the data center hardware driving efficiency, innovation, openness and scale in their RAN evolution.”
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