Airtel and Nokia strengthen core network partnership for faster 5G rollout

Spanning most of Airtel’s service regions in India, the multi-year rollout integrates network automation and GenAI-driven service orchestration to enhance efficiency, advance autonomous networks, and deliver high-speed, reliable connectivity to users

Nokia and Bharti Airtel are strengthening their collaboration with the deployment of Nokia’s Packet Core appliance-based and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) solutions, aiming to enhance network performance for Airtel’s growing 4G and 5G customer base. The solution will integrate 5G and 4G technologies into a unified system, ensuring seamless connectivity while boosting home broadband and enterprise-critical services.

As part of this expansion, Airtel will leverage Nokia’s automation framework to enable zero-touch service launches and improve lifecycle management for core network functions. This will accelerate new service rollouts while lowering operational costs. Additionally, by implementing Nokia’s converged Packet Core solution, Airtel is enhancing its 5G standalone (SA) readiness, simplifying network architecture, and optimizing hardware utilization. The integration of appliance-based Packet Core gateways will also help reduce the company’s cost per bit, while maintaining a cloud-native network infrastructure.

The multi-year rollout spans most of Airtel’s service regions across India and includes network automation to drive efficiency. The partnership also focuses on advancing autonomous networks by integrating GenAI for service orchestration and assurance, further enhancing Airtel’s ability to deliver high-speed, reliable connectivity to its users.

Enhancing network agility and reliability

“Nokia’s innovative Packet Core deployment architecture enables critical changes to our network quality and reliability for meeting the fast-rising growth in customer data requirements. This rollout further demonstrates our longstanding success in jointly collaborating to strengthen the overall Airtel customer experience,” said Randeep Sekhon, CTO of Airtel.

“Nokia and Airtel have a long-standing partnership and we are pleased to bolster its 5G SA readiness. Airtel’s use of Nokia’s Packet Core to build greater network agility and reliability demonstrates how we are both helping customers solve problems and furthering Nokia’s leadership position in the Core space, in India and around the world,” said Raghav Sahgal, President of Cloud and Network Services at Nokia.

Nokia’s solution provides a pre-integrated and modular server-based configuration for increased flexibility to support a wider range of business and operational deployment models. This allows Airtel to better target new customers and create new revenue streams.

Nokia’s Packet Core solution for Fixed Wireless Access enables additional capacity for home broadband and enterprise-critical application services for the delivery of extreme bandwidth and capacity to customers.