Intel today announced its partnership with Bharti Airtel to drive network development of 4G and 5G virtualized radio access network (vRAN) and open radio access network (RAN) technology.
Airtel’s network will be powered by a collection of Intel technology — the latest Xeon Scalable processors, FPGAs and eASICs, Ethernet 800 Series, and FlexRAN reference architecture — to meet the needs of its more than 345 million subscribers.

India has the world’s second-largest internet population at over 620 million. India’s active internet user base is expected to grow to 900 million by 2025.  5G will deepen the digital adoption through a range of industrial and customer use cases.

Randeep Sekhon, Bharti Airtel CTO, said: “Intel’s technologies will contribute to Airtel’s mission of serving India with world-class 5G services.”

Airtel and Intel, as members of the O-RAN Alliance, will develop Make in India 5G solutions and enable world-class telecom infrastructure in India through local partners.

“Airtel is delivering their network with a breadth of Intel technology, including Intel Xeon Scalable processors and FlexRAN software to optimize RAN workloads with embedded intelligence, to scale their infrastructure,”Dan Rodriguez, Intel corporate vice president, Network Platforms Group, said.