Bharti Airtel selects Ericsson's 5G solution to boost network performance

Swedish networking and telecommunications company Ericsson on Wednesday said it has entered into an agreement with Bharti Airtel to deploy its 5G-ready Cloud Packet Core in the telco's pan-India core network.

The deployment will enhance capacity in Airtel's network and enable it to address the rapidly growing demand for high-speed data services, Ericsson said in a press release.

The deployment will consist of solutions like Ericsson virtual Evolved Packet Gateway (vEPG) that follow ETSI standards. The deployment of these technologies will help Airtel in meeting the rapidly evolving demands of customers and also enable swift deployment of new use cases and innovative services for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and Internet of Things (IoT).

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The technologies and solutions that Ericsson is providing Airtel are a key part of its 5G Core offering. "Ericsson is dedicated to supporting customers on a smooth evolution from EPC to dual-mode 5G Cloud Core operations, 5G EPC and 5G Core," it said.

Earlier this year, Vodafone Idea had inked a similar deal to Ericsson for its pan-India core network.

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Commenting on the development, Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Bharti Airtel, said: "The Indian telecom market is witnessing massive surge in data usage. To address this demand and evolving consumption patterns, we are investing in innovative technologies and solutions to enable a superlative data experience for our customers in India. Ericsson is one of our key network partners and this deployment will help us enhance our packet core network which will not just scale up data capacity, but also make us edge cloud ready."

Edited by Chitranjan Kumar