Airtel, Nokia and MediaTek claim ‘new benchmark’ in 5G performance

The trial was aimed at maximising the uplink performance and was conducted at Airtel’s tech lab. It achieved uplink speeds of 300 Mbps, ‘setting a new benchmark in 5G network performance.’

In order to enhance the upload speed, the trio of firms aggregated frequency bands of 3.5 Ghz (n78) and 2.1 Ghz (n1), which they say significantly improves the uplink performance for demanding use cases by ‘dynamically switching’ the uplink transmission across two carriers in TDD (time division duplex) and FDD (frequency division duplex) spectrum more efficiently.

‘Tx switching’ promises faster connectivity and improved network efficiency for high-demand use cases such as video conferencing, live streaming and large file uploads, claims the release. Airtel used equipment from Nokia’s 5G AirScale radio portfolio and MediaTek’s Dimensity 5G mobile platform for the trial.

“At Airtel, continuous innovation remains the bedrock of all our product and service offerings,” said Randeep Sekhon, Chief Technology Officer, Bharti Airtel. “This trial not only stands testament to our philosophy of enhancing our state-of-the-art network infrastructure and delivering an unmatched 5G user experience but will also greatly enhance our network's uplink performance, resulting in faster data speeds and improved connectivity.”

Tarun Chhabra, Country Manager and Head of Mobile Networks Business at Nokia, India added: “We are proud to partner with our long-term partner Airtel on this ground-breaking project. Uplink Tx switching will pave the way for superior 5G networks, enabling seamless data transfer in mobile devices and driving demand for data-intensive applications like XR. We congratulate Bharti Airtel for achieving this milestone and pushing the boundaries of connectivity to new realms.”

Earlier this year Bharti also drafted in Nokia to conduct a of the latter’s 5G non-standalone (NSA) Cloud RAN solution. It took place on Airtel's commercial network, and successful data calls were conducted using 3.5-GHz spectrum for 5G and 2100-MHz for 4G, and throughput topped out at 1.2 Gbps.