Nokia Hits 1.2 Gbps 5G Speed in Trial with Bharti Airtel

Finnish telecom gear maker Nokia has achieved a top download speed of 1.2 gigabit per second for 5G services several times during trials it concluded recently, the company said on Monday. The download speed was achieved during the first 5G non-standalone (NSA) Cloud radio access network (RAN) trial with Bharti Airtel (Airtel) in India.

"The trial took place in an over-the-air environment utilising 3.5 GHz spectrum for 5G and 2100 MHz for 4G. Data calls were successfully performed with commercial user devices over Airtel's commercial network achieving a throughput of over 1.2 Gbps," Nokia said in a statement.

Nokia spokesperson said the top speed of over 1.2 Gbps was achieved several times during the trial in the mid-frequency band of 3.5 Ghz.

"This successful trial with our long-term partner, Bharti Airtel supports their ambitions for building scalable, agile and highly automated networks. Nokia's approach to Cloud RAN means that our customers can flexibly evolve to Cloud RAN with choices in Cloud infrastructure and data centre hardware. This will drive efficiency, innovation, openness, and scale in their RAN evolution," Nokia President of Mobile Networks Tommi Uitto said.

The trial was conducted using cloud network technology that eliminates the requirement to have several physical network elements.

"This successful Cloud RAN trial is a significant step forward in our consistent efforts to integrate the latest and most-efficient technologies into our network and leverage these to deliver brilliant customer experiences. This partnership with Nokia has enabled us to pioneer innovative solutions to upgrade our capabilities in 5G," Bharti Airtel, Chief Technology Officer, Randeep Sekhon said.