Bharti Airtel selects Ericsson for 4G rollout and 3G expansion

Global telecom equipments major Ericsson has bagged four-year agreement from Bharti Airtel to expand 3G WCDMA network across eight telecom circles in India. The new agreement includes rollout of 3G services in both UMTS 2100 MHZ and UMTS 900MHz band (in three circles). As part of the contract, Ericsson will supply, install and perform manage services for WCDMA Radio Access Networks (RAN). Ericsson, at its flagship technology event Ericsson Connect here in Delhi, also announced the launch of its next major software Ericsson Networks Software 16A which will feature a new suite of LTE software upgrades targeting the indoor space. [caption id=“attachment_2418378” align=“alignleft” width=“400”] From L-R: Paolo Colella (Ericsson India head); Hans Vestberg (President & CEO of Ericsson); Arun Bansal (head of Ericsson’s Radio business unit); and Jason Hoffman (Ericsson Cloud Head)[/caption] The new suite features advances in uplink and downlink performance – boosting network uplink speeds by up to 200 percent, downlink speeds by up to 30 percent and adding LTE Unlicensed (LTE-U), the first commercial step in Licensed Assisted Access – as well as features to support greater energy efficiency of small cells. Networks Software 16A also includes LTE-U, to drive higher performance. LTE-U enables operators to combine the reliability of licensed spectrum with indoor data speed boosts provided by unlicensed spectrum. Arun Bansal, senior vice president and head of business unit radio, Ericsson, said, “To keep pace with mobile broadband demand from both consumers and industry, operators need solutions that deliver both high performance and efficiency. Ericsson’s indoor software innovations deliver both. And, these new features combined with Ericsson’s end-to-end solutions, flexible go-to-market and business models and proactive relationships with key device ecosystem partners, ensure that our leading operators not only keep pace, but set the pace.” Ericsson Networks Software 16A builds on energy-efficiency capabilities in previous releases and now includes Cell Sleep mode. This feature enables individual carriers to automatically switch off during periods of low traffic demand, ensuring greater energy efficiency of small cells. The company launched the next generation Radio System in India to keep telecom operators prepared for 5G. The new system has been developed keeping the Indian requirements in mind, said Bansal. In addition, Ericsson introduced HDS 8000 – a hyperscale upgrade to Ericsson Cloud System that adds new software and hardware to ensure a “secure cloud experience.”