Airtel Deploys One of the World’s Newest Photonic Designs from Ciena to Nearly Triple Optic Fiber Capacity for Rolling Out 5G

HANOVER, Md. -- Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India's premier communications solutions provider, has implemented one of the world’s newest photonic infrastructure designs from Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) to almost triple optic fiber network capacity for delivering a world-class 5G experience to customers. 

Enabling faster deployment of exceptional services to webscale, large enterprise, government, and small/medium business customers requires a network that is high capacity, resilient, and adaptive. Rolling out 600G and 800G in India’s largest metros – Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Kolkata – allows Airtel to fast-track 5G and support high-growth cloud applications while lowering the cost per bit.

Randeep Sekhon, CTO of Bharti Airtel said, “Airtel was the country’s first telco to demonstrate live 5G service over a commercial network. As we work to deploy 5G more widely, Ciena plays an integral role in providing an agile network foundation to satisfy our customers’ dynamic requirements.”

Ryan Perera, Vice President and General Manager, Ciena India said, “The future of data consumption across India is at the edge – in homes, trains, hospitals, automobiles, factories and many other mission-critical environments. By investing in its metro network with Ciena’s industry-leading technology, Airtel is ideally positioned to support the booming digital economy.”

To improve resiliency and service availability in cities where fiber cuts are common, Airtel has implemented a self-optimizing network design using an advanced C&L-band infrastructure with Layer 0 control plane with Ciena’s 6500 Reconfigurable Line System (RLS). Airtel can also proactively localize, troubleshoot, and rapidly repair fiber fault conditions with Ciena’s Liquid Spectrum PinPoint OTDR software analytics. Additionally, to maximize efficiency of the network and allow for quick turn up of new high-bandwidth services, Airtel has deployed WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optics along with Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller.