Nokia today announced that it has successfully completed its first 5G non-standalone (NSA) Cloud RAN trial with Bharti Airtel (Airtel) in India. The project supports Airtel’s strategy of delivering a superior customer experience using high-performing networks. It is expected to deliver higher levels of service innovation, higher network automation, flexibility and efficient scaling of resources to support end-user services.

The trial took place in an over-the-air environment utilizing 3.5 GHz spectrum for 5G and 2100 MHz for 4G. Data calls were successfully performed with commercial user devices over Airtel’s commercial network achieving a throughput of over 1.2 Gbps. The trial utilized Nokia’s RAN Software for virtualized Distributed Unit (vDU) and virtualized Centralized Unit (vCU) running on x86 Hardware with a CaaS layer. The trial also used Nokia’s L1 acceleration that will enable enhanced power efficiency and support Nokia’s anyRAN benefits of using common RAN software with the purpose-built part of the network. This will enable common functionality and performance across the hybrid network.

The trial marks a significant milestone in Airtel’s overall cloudification journey and supports the operator’s ambition of bringing cloud networking benefits, such as scalability and agility, to their network.

Nokia’s anyRAN is an open approach to building future-ready radio access networks together with an ecosystem of best-in-class industry partners. It’s designed to give mobile operators and enterprises a collaborative advantage by offering them more flexibility in their choice of cloud infrastructure software, hardware, and technology suppliers. Operators can evolve their networks to a hybrid RAN approach with both Cloud RAN and purpose-built RAN deployments co-existing, delivering a consistent, high-quality performance.