Under the agreement, Airtel will utilize Nokia’s 1830 PSS-x OTN switches in its National Long-Distance Network, which connects major cities across India.

Technology Updates: Nokia and Bharti Airtel have announced a new partnership to deploy a next-generation optical transport network (OTN) across India. The new network is expected to provide Airtel’s customers with increased capacity, higher reliability, and lower costs. Under the agreement, Airtel will utilize Nokia’s 1830 PSS-x OTN switches in its National Long-Distance Network, which connects major cities across India. The new network is expected to be able to handle the growing demand for data traffic in India, which is one of the fastest-growing telecom markets in the world.

Next-Generation Optical Transport Network (OTN)

“As a world leader in OTN, our technology will help Airtel increase the capacity and features of Bharti’s optical transport network to meet growing bandwidth demand driven by the enterprise and hyperscaler segments. It will also provide the service level performance to meet the strict SLAs from Airtel customers,” Chandan Kumar, Head of Optical Network Business Centre for Nokia India, said in a statement.

The increased capacity will enable Airtel to potentially deliver faster and more reliable broadband services and be ready for new use cases, Nokia said.

According to the company, its OTN solution enables Bharti Airtel to seamlessly upgrade its legacy transport switching infrastructure across its pan-Indian network footprint to meet new transport network traffic demands while improving both the performance and reliability of its network.

Impact Of Launch of 5G Networks

Nokia noted that the launch of 5G networks and the push for broadband connectivity across India is increasing demands for Communications Service Providers (CSPs), including the augmentation of backhaul transport for denser 5G mobile networks, wholesale connectivity for new segments like smart grids, data centre interconnect (DCI), and other business services.

To address this exponential growth in traffic demand, transport networks need to be upgraded to increase overall transport capacity and bandwidth efficiency using high-capacity OTN switching and utilising additional spectrum, including the L-band wavelengths of the fiber, it added.

The deployment of the new OTN is expected to have a significant impact on the Indian telecom market. It is likely to lead to:

• Increased competition: The new network will give Airtel a competitive edge over other telecom operators in India. This is likely to lead to lower prices for consumers and more innovation in the market.
• Improved quality of service: The new network is expected to provide Airtel’s customers with a better quality of service, with fewer outages and faster data speeds.
• Increased network capacity: The new network will be able to handle the growing demand for data traffic in India, which is essential for the development of the digital economy.

(With inputs from IANS)