Bharti Airtel and the Tata Group on Monday announced a strategic partnership for implementing 5G networks solutions for India.

Tata Group has developed a ‘state of the art’ O-RAN based Radio & NSA/SA Core and has integrated a totally indigenous telecom stack, leveraging the group capabilities and that of its partners. This will be available for commercial development starting January 2022, said a statement.

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Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) brings its global system integration expertise and helps align the end-to-end solution to both 3GPP and O-RAN standards, as the network and equipment are increasingly embedded into software, it said.

Airtel will pilot and deploy this indigenous solution as part of its 5G rollout plans in India and start the pilot in January 2022, as per the guidelines formulated by the government.

As per the statement, these ‘Made in India’ 5G products and solutions are aligned to global standards, and inter-operate with other products based on standard open interfaces and those defined by the O-RAN Alliance. The 5G solutions, once commercially proven in Airtel’s diverse and brownfield network, will open export opportunities for India, which is now the second largest telecom market in the world.

Bharti Airtel’s MD & CEO, India and South Asia, Gopal Vittal, said: “We are delighted to join forces with the Tata Group to make India a global hub for 5G and allied technologies. With its world-class technology ecosystem and talent pool, India is well positioned to build cutting edge solutions and applications for the world. This will also provide a massive boost to India becoming an innovation and manufacturing destination.”

Tata Group/TCS’ N. Ganapathy Subramaniam said: “As a group, we are excited about the opportunity presented by 5G and adjacent possibilities. We are committed to building a world-class networking equipment and solutions business to address these opportunities in networking space. We are pleased to have Airtel as our customer in this initiative.”

Airtel is a Board member of the O-RAN Alliance and is committed to explore and implement O-RAN based networks in India. Earlier this year, Airtel became the first telecom company in India to demonstrate 5G over its live network in Hyderabad. The company has started 5G trials in major cities using spectrum allocated by the Department of Telecom.

The Tata Group’s telecom and media enterprises cater to the communication requirements of global business houses to SMEs, and from wholesale to home networks. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) is also a member of the O-RAN Alliance.