Bharti Airtel, Nokia tie up for 5G technology, IoT

As Indian telecoms firms gear up to take on the disruptive entry of Reliance Jio Infocom, market leader Bharti Airtel and network equipment maker Nokia have announced an expansion of their collaborative technology partnership to work on 5G technology standard and management of connected devices.

Under a new agreement, Nokia and Airtel will collaborate to drive the definition and development of these new services with a focus on taking the path to 5G network connectivity, Nokia said in a statement issued on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

This effort will build on 4G in the most efficient way in terms of power, operations, and cost effectiveness, and with the highest level of quality and reliability, it said.

No financial details of the partnership were disclosed.

"5G and IoT applications have tremendous potential to transform lives and we are pleased to partner with Nokia to enable these future technologies for our customers," Bharti Airtel director - Network Services (India and South Asia) Abhay Savargaonkar said.

5G promises dramatic improvements in peak data speeds, network latency and agility, as well as the ability to enable new capabilities such as network slicing.

This will allow operators to support a growing number of customers and potentially billions of connected IoT devices and lay the foundation for smarter cities and rural communities, connected vehicles, industrial automation and remote healthcare.

"After our successful association with Bharti Airtel for 2G, 3G and 4G technologies, we are proud to partner to prepare for the future of mobile networks," Nokia head of India market Sanjay Malik said.

Nokia will leverage its global experience in 5G-related industry projects and collaborations to enable Bharti Airtel to prepare their networks for greater capacity, coverage and speed, he added.