Comments
Social-media giant Meta Platforms and Bharti Airtel, on Monday, announced a collaboration to jointly invest in telecom infrastructure to cater to the rising demand for high-speed data and digital services like Communication Platform as a Service (CpaaS) to support the emerging requirements of customers and enterprises in India.
The announcement comes on the back of rgw telecom operators’ demand to share revenue with service providers to build networks. Foundational connectivity infrastructure such as subsea cable systems are crucial for supporting the rising demand for high-speed data and digital services, as India prepares to roll out 5G networks later this year, said the companies in a statement.
Airtel will also partner with Meta and STC to extend 2Africa Pearls (world’s longest subsea cable system) to India. It is expected to provide faster Internet connectivity to almost 3 billion people globally.
The companies will extend the cable to Airtel’s landing station in Mumbai, and also pick up dedicated capacity to further strengthen its submarine network portfolio.
“Subsea cables and open, disaggregated networks continue to play a huge role in the foundational infrastructure needed to support network capacity and fuel innovation,” said Francisco Varela, Vice-President of mobile partnerships for Meta.
As members of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) Open RAN project group, Airtel and Meta have been pioneers of Open RAN technologies, with the shared goal of increasing ecosystem diversity, driving innovation, and cost-efficiency in connectivity networks.
Airtel is also currently conducting trials for 4G and 5G Open RAN solutions on select sites in the state of Haryana, and will commercially deploy the solution across several locations in India over the next few quarters.
“With our contributions to the 2Africa cable and Open RAN, we are investing in crucial and progressive connectivity infrastructure which is needed to support the increasing demand for high-speed data in India. We look forward to working closely with Meta to deliver best-in-class digital experiences to our customers in India,” said Vani Venkatesh, Chief Executive Officer, Global Business, Bharti Airtel.
Airtel will also integrate Meta’s WhatsApp within its CPaaS platform. With this integration, businesses will now be able to use WhatsApp and reach to provide omnichannel customer engagement to enterprises.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.