Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Tuesday announced that it will collaborate with US chipmaker Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. to roll out 5G services in India. Airtel will utilize the Qualcomm 5G RAN Platforms to roll-out virtualized and Open RAN-based networks.

Recently, Airtel became India’s first telco to demonstrate 5G over a LIVE commercial network in the city of Hyderabad.

“The flexible and scalable architecture of O-RAN will create new opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses to become viable players in the deployment of 5G networks,” Bharti Airtel said in a regulatory filing.

In addition, Airtel and Qualcomm Technologies will collaborate to enable a wide array of use cases, including 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) that is designed to deliver broadband connectivity at Gigabit speeds to homes and businesses, it added.

“With Airtel's integrated service portfolio and Qualcomm Technologies’ 5G leadership, we will be well placed to usher India into the next era of hyperfast and ultra-low latency digital connectivity,” said Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Bharti Airtel.

According to the latest Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data, Airtel added the highest 4.05 million wireless subscribers in the month of December 2020 taking its total wireless subscriber base to 338.7 million as of December 31, 2020.

Airtel’s market share also increased marginally to 29.36 percent from 28.97 percent in the previous month.

At 12:30 pm, the shares of Bharti Airtel were trading 0.47 percent higher at Rs 573.40 apiece on the BSE.

(Edited by : Abhishek Jha)