CIOInsider India Magazine

Between now and 2030, 5G might reach and maintain a leading position as the world’s foremost cellular technology. Within the next ten years, the telecoms must constantly transform and repeat their designs to continue to meet the consumer demand in terms of faster, wider and more reliable connectivity solutions. There has never been a better time to accelerate 5G designs. From infrastructure to endpoint, 5G is expected to reach out to every aspect of day-to-day business routines as well as personal lives.

In one of the latest turnarounds, Bharti Airtel is collaborating with Capgemini to bring 5G based enterprise grade solutions to India market. With the collaboration, both the companies Airtel and Capgemini are partnering and sharing their experience with 5G solutions, connectivity and system integration capabilities for co-innovating a range of 5G use cases focused on the Indian context. Capgemini has a 5G lab in its own campus at Mumbai, while Airtel’s 5G lab is in Manesar. In the aftermath of partnership, oth the 5G labs will actively work as development hubs. Two 5G use circumstances have already been deployed by Capgemini at Airtel's 5G Lab, which are focused on smart health and immersive remote assistance for field operations and maintenance.

Ananth Chandramouli, Managing Director of the India Business Unit, Capgemini says, “Our partnership with Airtel is truly a game changer for both of us and has the potential to disrupt the market dynamics. Through this partnership, our focus will be on enabling enterprises to leverage the benefits of 5G technologies and identifying exciting new use cases to fuel innovation, revolutionize business models and accelerate digital transformation.”

Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, CEO – Enterprise Business, Airtel says, “Airtel has been leading 5G testing and validation in India and looks forward to building an open and vibrant ecosystem that brings together all stakeholders and drives innovation. Through this partnership with Capgemini, we look forward to offering our customers cutting edge solutions, which deliver the benefits of the 5G technology.”

As a part of 5G business inventiveness, Airtel is joining forces with leading global consulting and technology companies to test 5G based solutions. Earlier this year Airtel demonstrated India’s first 5G experience over a LIVE 4G network. Company has also demonstrated India’s first rural 5G trials as well as the first cloud gaming experience on 5G, besides spearheading the O-RAN Alliance initiatives in India to build 5G solutions.

Airtel today is a global communications solutions provider with over 480 Million customers in seventeen countries across South Asia and Africa. The company ranks amongst the top three mobile operators globally and networks cover over two billion people. Airtel is India’s largest integrated communications solutions provider and the second largest mobile operator in Africa. The company’s trade portfolio includes high speed 4G or 4.5G mobile broadband, Airtel Xstream Fiber that promises speeds up to 1Gbps with convergence across linear and on-demand entertainment, streaming services spanning music and video, digital payments and financial services. For enterprise customers, Airtel offers a scale of solutions that includes secure connectivity, cloud and data centre services, cyber security, IoT, Ad Tech and cloud based communication.

On June 21, Airtel and TCS had announced partnership for implementation of 5G solutions which initiates from January 2022. A move that would help the latter strengthen capability and scale and the former reduce the cost of the deployment. TCS will implement the 5G solutions that it has developed for Airtel. Tata Group has developed 5G solutions using Open-Radio Access Network (O-RAN), a part of telecommunication architecture. O-RAN is similar to open source in software, that is, it is not exclusive. It can be used by any company to develop solutions hence making it flexible for more companies to develop solutions. Increased participation brings down the cost for 5G implementation.

On June 10, during the TCS AGM, Chandrasekaran, Chairman, Tata Group said, “5G is new technology and TCS will play a significant role both in the development of firmware, which is required to develop the necessary technology (for 5G solutions). But most importantly, leveraging the 5G and create large number of applications in various sectors. This is an important growth area for TCS.”

The partnership of TCS with Airtel is clearly in line with this vision, where TCS can strengthen its capabilities and eventually scale its solutions and gain market share when 5G deployment gains pace in India and globally.