Airtel hosts India edition of O-RAN Alliance Global PlugFest 2021; tech players participate

Bharti Airtel hosted the ‘O-RAN Alliance Global PlugFest 2021’ in India in partnership with global and Indian technology companies, a release said on Thursday. The event was held at Airtel’s network experience centre in Manesar, near Delhi.

Put simply, Open RAN or open radio access network architecture is industry terminology for interoperability and standardisation of radio access network elements including products and software from various vendors. The Global PlugFest offers a platform to the global O-RAN community to integrate and test solutions, including 5G and 4G.

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“This year’s edition saw wider participation from members of the global O-RAN community. Airtel was joined by AMI, ASOCS, Capgemini Engineering, Cisco, Intel, IP Infusion, Keysight Technologies, Mavenir, Sercomm, STL, TCS, VIAVI Solutions, VMware and VVDN,” Airtel release said. This was the second O-RAN Alliance Global PlugFest hosted in India by Airtel, the release said and added that this year’s edition saw wider participation from members of the global O-RAN community.

Commenting on the development, Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Bharti Airtel said, The enthusiastic response to the event underscores the growing maturity of O-RAN and the global conviction towards this movement”. The learnings will further accelerate the journey to ‘Make in India’ O-RAN based 5G solutions that can be deployed widely across India and the rest of the world, Sekhon added.

Airtel has been a board member since the beginning of O-RAN Alliance, which now associates a global community of over 300 telecom operators, vendors and research and academic institutions working to develop a sustainable open RAN ecosystem.