Airtel is Committed to Network Transformation

Bharti Airtel Limited (hereafter referred to as “Airtel”) is an Indian global telecommunications services company based in New Delhi, India. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia, Africa, and the Channel Islands. Airtel provides GSM, 3G and 4G LTE mobile services, fixed line broadband and voice services depending upon the country of operation. It is the largest mobile network operator in India and the third largest in the world. Recently, ZTE Technologies interviewed Varaprasad, senior vice president of Airtel. He shared with us his responsibilities in Airtel, Airtel’s contributions to India, the characteristics of Airtel, and his thoughts on NFV, M2M, IOT and 5G. He also talked about his expectations for Airtel in 2016.

 

I’m senior vice president in Airtel, looking after the strategy of core network, planning and engineering. My responsibilities include making strategy, launching new services of core network, and finalizing technology and solutions. I’m also responsible for small cells, indoor solutions, carrier aggregation, data services, and transmission technologies.

As India’s second most valuable brand, how does Airtel contribute to the economic growth of India?

In India, the telecom sector is one of the most important sectors to promote the development of GDP. As the largest mobile network operator in India, Airtel has the biggest market share. It contributes immensely to Indian economic growth through its high wired and mobile penetration.
Airtel started its journey in 1995. At that time, India opened its market for wireless, but the telecom penetration was only about one to two percent. Today, our mobile penetration has reached 80 to 90 percent. Therefore, we can say that Airtel is really a big contributor to the Indian society and economy.

 

In my view, Airtel has three distinct differentiators. The first differentiator is innovation. Airtel is an innovator in the telecom market from the very beginning. It was the first operator that initiated sharing services in India. It has also initiated Open Network, which is a national network transformation initiative. Moreover, Airtel has opened up its entire mobile network information to its customers through an interactive online interface. The new interface will display Airtel’s mobile network coverage and signal strength across India in addition to network site deployment status. Airtel has created a very successful business model, and other telcos are trying to copy our model and rolling out similar products and services.
The second differentiator is our efficiency. One of Airtel’s strong points is that we execute projects in a very fast way. For instance, we have completed a very large network project within nine months, so we can deliver services to customers rapidly.
The third differentiator is our business model. We operate networks with a low cost model, which enables us to deliver voice services at the cheapest price. With the rapid increase of data, we provide our subscribers with data services at a low price to win more customers.

 

Actually, we have started doing a series of trials on NFV with wired and wireless solutions. We are also making a few plans on NFV commercial trials. We do believe that as a long-term strategy, NFV will reduce our capital expenditures and is good for the finance of operators. However, we are a little cautious of trying to do it heavily, because we want to see the test results before pushing for large-scale application.
We also see the long range of using virtualized RAN, which regularizes the biggest beamform in core networks. There are some challenges in terms of transferring it in core networks. However, we firmly believe that in a couple of years, we will be able to achieve the transformation.
We have found that IMS is good to network evolution. We have started to deploy it, and the final stage is going on now. In a couple of months, it will be able to go-life. There is also EPC; we are going to launch it in a couple of weeks.

 

M2M and IoT are our main focuses, and we put a lot of emphasis on them. First, because there are a lot of devices that access from one point to more places, M2M is one of the major areas that are related to customer lifecycle management and product lifecycle management. IoT is an area that will help us connect everything, so it is very important for improving customer experience. Currently, our core network access has been successfully transformed, and the process of new services has been simplified. Rather than operators doing customer lifecycle management, we give the flexibility to our customers.
Second, we have simplified tariff management. Since India is a federation that comprises the bulk of the Indian subcontinent and lies atop the Indian tectonic plate, there are many provinces with diverse geographical features. Each signal going into a different geography will be in a roaming site, so it is difficult for us to manage tariff. To overcome this challenge, we try to upgrade the network and simplify the tariff management. By doing this, customers can use any services anywhere in India, and we can also make a lot of benefits.
The third thing what we are trying to do is developing new technologies to ensure future growth. We are deploying a range of innovative solutions including small cells, indoor solutions, Wi-Fi hotspots, and carrier aggregation to improve customer experience. Over the next three years, Airtel plans to deploy over 100,000 such solutions.

 

5G is a breakthrough technology. Whether 2G, 3G or 4G, it was Airtel who brought these technologies to India. In terms of 5G, we are actually looking at it closely.
Currently, we are working on the key technologies of 5G. We have done a few preliminary trials on 5G technologies. We demonstrated the carrier aggregation from 200 Mbps to 400 Mbps, and tested it in two markets in India. In the future, Airtel will focus on standards and products development, and promote the ecosystem to accelerate commercialization of 4.5G and 5G technologies. What’s more, we will work for validation practices including network equipment, features and new releases, and conduct the proof of concepts as well as trials.

 

What are your expectations for Airtel?

In the last few years, Airtel has captured the biggest market share in India, investing over INR 15,000 crores across India in deploying over 88,000 sites. This is the largest network deployment anywhere in the world outside of China. What’s more, we transformed our core network last year.
My expectations for Airtel are: first, we are going to further consolidate the core network in the market. As there are a lot of unsaturated markets, we will try to consolidate more networks, being the leader in India.
Second, we will further invest in a lot of mobile networks and core networks, with the aim of expanding coverage and enhancing capacity of 3G and 4G networks in Asia and Africa.
Third, we will continue to work on our network transformation program—Project Leap. It is a strategic company initiative aimed at perceptibly improving our network quality and delivering the best customer experience.