Bharti Airtel has selected Huawei Telecommunications for the deployment of Airtel’s Massive MIMO in Bangalore and ZTE for Kolkata.

Airtel will benefit from Massive MIMO solution, a pre-5G technology used in select telecom markets, because it can increase spectrum efficiency by 5 to 7 times, enhancing intensive coverage and user experience.

“As India strides towards exponential and unprecedented data growth, we are now better equipped to serve this growing demand with a strategic advantage to provide faster speeds and enhanced user experience to customers,” said Abhay Savargaonkar, director – Networks, Bharti Airtel.

“Our goal is to bring considerable commercial value to operators through innovative technologies. Huawei’s Massive MIMO can greatly improve 4G network spectral efficiency and help effectively handle any capacity challenges encountered during rapid mobile development,” said Jay Chen, CEO of Huawei India.

Huawei’s Massive MIMO features an Active Antenna Unit design that integrates radio and antenna components for reliability project implementation. This pre-5G solution adopts large-scale antenna arrays to control the width and tilt, both vertical and horizontal, for 3D beamforming.

Huawei said this feature is complemented by channel estimation and advanced algorithms to allow Massive MIMO to empower several terminals to reuse time-frequency resources for improved network capacity.

Airtel earlier said the telecom operator aims to expand the roll out of Massive MIMO to other towns in phases. Airtel will be offering increase in data speed without taking additional tariffs from its mobile users across the country.