Ericsson revealed on Monday that it has now deployed 100,000 massive MIMO 5G radios for Bharti Airtel across its 12 circles as the Indian telco says it’s on track to complete its 5G rollout next month.
Airtel has deployed Ericsson Radio System products and solutions from Ericsson’s 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) and Mini-Link (microwave) mobile transport portfolios over the last 16 months, which Ericsson described as “record time”.
Airtel has been aggressively rolling out its 5G network since its initial service launch in October 2022. In that time, said Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon, the telco has signed on over 65 million unique 5G customers on its network.
Airtel also said that its 5G Plus service is now available across all districts in India and is on track to cover the entire country by March 2024.
The news follows last week’s announcement that Indian Airtel and Ericsson had successfully demonstrated millimetre-wave (mmWave) 5G functionality on Airtel’s network, as part of Airtel’s plan to launch 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) services.
In October last year, Airtel tested Ericsson’s pre-commercial RedCap software on its 5G network, which Airtel hopes will open up new IoT use cases for 5G in India.
