Airtel partners with Huawei India for the deployment of Massive MIMO

Huawei Telecommunications India announced that it has partnered with Bharti Airtel for the deployment of Airtel's Massive MIMO in Bangalore. An integral component in India's roadmap to 5G deployment,

Massive MIMO solution can potentially increase spectrum efficiency by five to seven times, enhancing intensive coverage and user experience.

"As India goes digital, there is an unprecedented rise in demand for higher network speeds to feed data-hungry mobile applications. Massive MIMO is the best technology to boost spectrum efficiency and is one of the key solutions for Huawei's 4.5G/5G evolution," the company said.

Increasingly, more mobile phone users are transitioning from 3G to 4G devices, presenting a capacity challenge to operators. Massive MIMO can help operators greatly enhance wireless network capacity and user experience by optimizing existing sites and spectrum resources.

Abhay Savargaonkar, Director - Networks, Bharti Airtel, said, "We have partnered Huawei for the deployment of our latest technological advancement - Massive MIMO, the first step towards 5G. As India strides towards exponential and unprecedented data growth, we are now better equipped to serve this growing demand with a strategic advantage to provide faster speeds and enhanced user experience to customers."

Jay Chen, CEO, Huawei India, said, "Our goal is to bring considerable commercial value to operators through innovative technologies. Huawei's Massive MIMO can greatly improve 4G network spectral efficiency and help effectively handle any capacity challenges encountered during rapid mobile development, which India is experiencing at the moment. This partnership with Bharti Airtel, India's largest telecom services provider, will help steer towards an important direction for the further development and future of 5G evolution in the country."

Huawei's Massive MIMO features an Active Antenna Unit design that integrates radio and antenna components for reliability and ease of project implementation. This groundbreaking solution adopts large-scale antenna arrays that are able to control the width and tilt, both vertical and horizontal, for 3D beamforming. This feature is complemented by channel estimation and advanced algorithms to allow Massive MIMO to empower several terminals to reuse time-frequency resources for improved network capacity.

Huawei is dedicated to creating business value for operators by technology innovation. Huawei's Massive MIMO is yet another key solution for operators in their construction of 5G networks.