Close on the heels of securing core network functions business of Vodafone-Idea in India, IBM Red Hat has also bagged a similar order from its close competitor Bharti Airtel to build 5G-ready telecom network on its open universal hybrid cloud.
Under the terms of agreement, IBM Red Hat would build the new telco network to support core operations, and monetise its pan-India 4G network using new services and ensure that Bharti-Airtel is competitive against its arch rival Reliance Jio Infocomm.
IBM Red Hat would also help Airtel build its next-generation core network, analytical tools and consumer and enterprise services on top of its cloud platform that is based on open standards.
Airtel’s plan is to adopt an open cloud architecture that makes use of Red Hat OpenStack Platform for all network workloads and for newer containerised workloads, the company is planning to use Red Hat OpenShift. In addition, the network would help create new revenue streams with the on-boarding of third-party services including gaming, remote media production and enterprise services.
The company aims to achieve improvement in time-to-market of services, reduction in operating expenses and reduced capital expenses. Airtel’s network cloud is embedded with AI and is designed to facilitate automation in onboarding and improve monitoring and predictive capabilities for different services from network equipment providers."
"Our goal with this powerful, seamless horizontal approach is to make our network future-ready and enable Airtel to efficiently serve the massive surge in data consumption. The hybrid cloud architecture will resonate with our customer-obsession by providing improved flexibility, network stability and performance and bringing agility and automation in our network operations," Bharti Airtel's CTO Randeep Sekhon said in a prepared statement.
While Reliance Jio is the market leader in the Indian mobile telephony space in terms of subscribers, Vodafone-Idea stands a distant second followed by Bharti Airtel and state-owned BSNL Limited. At last count, Reliance Jio had 375 million subscribers followed by Vodafone-Idea with 329 million, Bharti Airtel 328 million and BSNL123 million.
