In its annual report for the fiscal year (FY) 2022-23, Bharti Airtel said that it has deployed 5G in non-standalone (NSA) mode on 3500 MHz band in more than 3,500 cities and towns and rapidly expanding its reach. All the 5G capable smartphones in India support Airtel 5G Plus, and this was achieved through collaborations with the smartphone manufacturers for timely testing and commercial release of the binary for 5G support on the Airtel network. Airtel 5G Plus is also environment-friendly and consumes lower energy per GB compared to legacy networks. Airtel signed 5G network agreements with Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung to commence 5G deployment in August 2022. It has a long-standing relationship for connectivity and pan-India managed services with Ericsson and Nokia, while the partnership with Samsung will begin this year onwards.
According to Airtel, 5G will be the primary pivot to drive growth by catalysing the fourth industrial revolution through enterprise use cases. Airtel’s home broadband is now available in nearly 1,200 cities, with rollout being further strengthened via local cable operator partnerships. The company added its highest-ever 1.6 million net customers to surpass the 6 million customer base, resulting in over 33 per cent revenue growth.
Further, Airtel said that it is looking forward to strengthening its technology partnership with potential open radio access network (RAN) vendors and scaling it commercially. The telco informed that it successfully conducted India’s first open RAN-based live 5G network validation in the field and achieved 1 Gbps+ speed using commercial mobile devices. Open RAN solution deployed by Airtel is fully cloud-native and supports open RAN standard-based interfaces. It is leading the innovation efforts of the O-RAN Alliance in India. The operator has also invested in augmenting testing and validation capabilities at its lab so that these solutions can be verified for end-to-end functionality, performance and efficiency.
In the Airtel Business segment, the strategy to go wide and deep has delivered exceptional results in select accounts for the company. Investments in data centres, undersea fibre cables and emerging digital offerings augur well for the business in years to come. In FY 2022-23, Airtel became the leading operator in India’s business-to-business (B2B) segment. Airtel Business now contributes 19 per cent to its India revenues and is among the fastest-growing units within the global telcos. As per the telco, this has been delivered through its investments, product portfolio enhancement and go-to-market re-tooling efforts. The company is investing in submarine cables, fibre connectivity across the country, private cloud, and data centres for its enterprise customers. Investments are targeted towards the next leg of accelerated growth and digital transformation.
