India's Bharti Airtel awards 4G and 5G extension deal to NokiaIndia's Bharti Airtel awards 4G and 5G extension deal to Nokia

It's year-end bonanza for Nokia as it gets Airtel's 4G and 5G multi-year extension deal.

Gagandeep Kaur, Contributing Editor

November 20, 2024

2 Min Read
Airtel logo on building in New Delhi
(Source: Saurabh Singh/Alamy Stock Photo)

Nokia has announced that Bharti Airtel, India's second-largest service provider, has awarded the Finnish vendor a multi-year, multibillion extension deal to deploy 4G and 5G gear across key cities and states.

Under the terms of the contract, Nokia will deploy products from its 5G AirScale portfolio, including basestations, baseband units and massive MIMO radios. Airtel will also use Nokia's products and services to upgrade its existing 4G network with multiband radios and baseband equipment, which will also be able to support 5G. The deployment paves the way for 5G Advanced network evolution, the press release says.

Airtel will also use Nokia's MantaRay Network Management for network monitoring and management. The financial details of the deal were not revealed. 

"This strategic partnership with Nokia will future proof our network infrastructure and provide customers with unparalleled user experience, along with a network that will be eco-friendly to minimize environmental impact," said Gopal Vittal, vice chairman and managing director of Bharti Airtel.

"This strategic agreement further solidifies our long-standing collaboration with Airtel and our footprint in India," Pekka Lundmark, president and CEO of Nokia, meanwhile stated.

This comes close on the heels of Bharti Airtel awarding a multibillion-dollar contract to Ericsson. 

The service provider had 90 million subscribers at the end of the June 2024 quarter. However, the competition is increasing, with Jio, India’s largest service provider, claiming to have 148 million 5G subscribers at the end of the September 2024 quarter. In addition, Vodafone Idea is all set to launch 5G services in March 2025. The increase in subscribers is leading to a drop in network experience, which makes it imperative to improve network capacity. 

The focus on network experience is also crucial as the service provider plans to focus on the consumer segment for 5G monetization. It recently hiked rates and continues to be vocal about price rationalization. The tariff hike led to several subscribers switching to BSNL, which hadn't increased its rates. Superior network performance will be crucial to prevent churn of increasingly demanding Indian users.

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About the Author

Gagandeep Kaur

Contributing Editor

With more than a decade of experience, Gagandeep Kaur Sodhi has worked for the most prominent Indian communications industry publications including Dataquest, Business Standard, The Times of India, and Voice&Data, as well as for Light Reading. Delhi-based Kaur, who has knowledge of and covers a broad range of telecom industry developments, regularly interacts with the senior management of companies in India's telecom sector and has been directly responsible for delegate and speaker acquisition for prominent events such as Mobile Broadband Summit, 4G World India, and Next Generation Packet Transport Network.

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