Airtel hosts first 'O-RAN Alliance Plugfest' to find India-made O-RAN solutions

Testing and integration are crucial for developing a commercially available open RAN ecosystem, says Andre Fuetsch, Chairman of the O-RAN ALLIANCE and Chief Technology Officer of AT&T.

And to prove India's prowess in making O-RAN solutions, Bharti Airtel hosted the country's first Plugfest for the O-RAN ALLIANCE.

Airtel has been a member of the O-RAN ALLIANCE since its inception in 2018.  Airtel is said to be the first operator in India to commercially deploy a virtual RAN solution based on disaggregated and open architecture defined by the O-RAN ALLIANCE.

This event demonstrated the growing maturity of the O-RAN ecosystem to serve customers through emerging technologies such as 5G. The first India edition of O-RAN Plugfest is part of Airtel’s commitment to build an open technology ecosystem, including O-RAN-based deployments.

Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Bharti Airtel, says, that Airtel is committed to evolving a network through an open architecture and is delighted to partner with the O-RAN community. "This offers a great opportunity to Indian organizations with innovative hardware, software, and services capabilities to build a Make in India - O-RAN solution for Indian and global markets," said Sekhon.

Sekhon further said that the company is committed to open RAN solutions further by supporting a number of disruptive and innovative partners, helping them develop solutions capable of addressing the scale and complexity of its network and that of other brownfield operators around the world.

At the India edition of the Second Global O-RAN ALLIANCE Plugfest, Airtel partnered with leading players such Altiostar, Altran, ASOCS, Mavenir, NEC, STL, VIAVI Solutions, VVDN, and Xilinx to demonstrate multiple technology use cases, including 5G.

Commenting further about the need for a Plugfest, Andre Fuetsch, Chairman of the O-RAN ALLIANCE and Chief Technology Officer of AT&T, said, “The joint, open, and coordinated effort greatly accelerates the technical evaluation of O-RAN solutions and effectively avoids duplication of efforts for all involved parties whether network operators or solution providers.”