Bharti Airtel has conducted India’s first Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) based live 5G network validation in partnership with Mavenir.
Open Virtualised Radio Access Network (Open vRAN) solution brings network elasticity, eliminates vendor lock-in and enables Airtel to leverage virtualization, and web-scale containerization to support cloud deployment scenario.

Airtel conducted the Open RAN based 5G validation in Chandigarh and Mohali, over the 3500 MHz band test spectrum allotted to Airtel by the Department of Telecom, Government of India. Speeds of over 1 Gbps were validated with the equipment deployed and configured in Non-Standalone (NSA) mode and using commercially available 5G mobile devices.

Randeep Sekhon, CTO of Bharti Airtel said: “This is a major milestone for the Open RAN ecosystem in India, and yet another validation of the growing readiness of 5G networks based on open architecture.”

BG Kumar, President – Communication Services, Mavenir said: “This partnership with Airtel has given impetus to Open RAN ecosystem towards faster deployment of Open RAN.”

Airtel, a Board member of O-RAN Alliance, was the first mobile network operator in India to commercially deploy an open virtual RAN solution based on disaggregated and open architecture defined by the O-RAN Alliance.