The telecom major on Monday (5 December 2022) announced that it has collaborated with Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta) to support the growth of India's digital ecosystem.
Meta builds technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world.
Airtel and Meta will jointly invest in global connectivity infrastructure and Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) based new-age digital solutions to support the emerging requirements of customers and enterprises in India.
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. Airtel will partner with Meta and STC to extend 2Africa Pearls to India. 2Africa is the world's longest subsea cable system and is expected to provide faster internet connectivity to almost 3 billion people globally, the company said.
Both 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. The 2Africa cable will significantly boost India's cable capacity and empower global hyper-scalers and businesses to build new integrated solutions and provide a high-quality seamless experience to customers.
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. The telecom company said that it has signed an agreement to help increase operational efficiency of Open RAN and facilitate energy management and automation in radio networks using advanced analytics and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) models.
Bharti Airtel said that it is currently conducting trials for 4G and 5G Open RAN solutions on selected sites in Haryana and will commercially deploy the solution across several locations in India over the next few quarters. Airtel will share its learnings with wider ecosystem partners within the TIP community, including Meta, to help accelerate the deployment of Open RAN based networks across the world, it added.
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Further, the telecom major added that the businesses in India are rapidly shifting to cloud-based solutions to serve their customers digitally. Airtel IQ, the world's first network embedded CPaaS ecosystem, offers cloud communication across voice, messaging and video channels to help enterprises transform their customer engagement and drive profitability by leveraging automation and boosting revenue.
Airtel will integrate Meta's WhatsApp within its CPaaS platform. With this integration, businesses will now be able to use WhatsApp's features and reach to provide an unparalleled omni-channel customer engagement to enterprises, the company stated in the press release.
Vani Venkatesh, CEO - Global Business of Bharti Airtel said, 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.
Francisco Varela, vice president of mobile partnerships for Meta said, Subsea cables and open, disaggregated networks continue to play a huge role in the foundational infrastructure needed to support network capacity and fuel innovation. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Airtel to further advance the region's connectivity infrastructure that will enable a better network experience for people and businesses across India.
Bharti Airtel is a global communications solutions provider with over 500 million customers in 17 countries across South Asia and Africa.
The telecom major's consolidated net profit surged 89.17% to Rs 2,145.2 crore on 21.89% jump in revenue from operations to Rs 3,4526.8 crore in Q2 FY23 over Q2 FY22.
Shares of Bharti Airtel fell 0.64% to Rs 843.40 on the BSE.
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