Mavenir and Airtel Demonstrate O-RAN RIC (RAN Intelligent Controller) at Global O-RAN ALLIANCE Plugfest hosted by Airtel in India

Bharti Airtel ("Airtel"), India's largest integrated telco, together with Mavenir, demonstrated O-RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), at the recent Global O-RAN ALLIANCE Plugfest it hosted.

The Global Plugfest, which was a first for the India region participation, showcased the growing maturity of the O-RAN ecosystem. The event allowed participants to integrate and validate conformance & interoperability of the solutions implemented based on O-RAN defined architecture & specifications to accelerate readiness of solutions for commercial deployments.

The O-RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) demonstrated by Mavenir and Airtel makes use of advanced machine learning algorithms to optimize network performance. This demonstration showed RIC in action, ingesting configuration data and performance metrics from a demonstration RAN, and iteratively optimizing the configuration parameters to achieve improvement in key performance indicators. The target objective function is configurable by the operator, guiding the optimization process to meet potentially dynamically changing business requirements at runtime. Scope of demonstration also includes O-RAN O1 interface testing of Mavenir Non-RealTime RIC.

Pardeep Kohli, President and CEO Mavenir, said, "We are excited to partner with Airtel in the first global O-RAN plugfest event that enables re-thinking of traditional network deployment models."

"We are delighted to partner with the global O-RAN community. Our engagement with Mavenir for this successful demonstration is yet another step forward towards building 5G systems with open network architecture," said Randeep Sekhon, CTO at Bharti Airtel.

Kuntal Chowdhury, Senior Vice-President and General Manager of Mavenir's AI & Analytics business unit, said, "Optimization of network configuration parameters in traditional network deployments is characterized by high cost, the need for expert technicians, and long delays as data is collected through drive-testing. Through the intelligent application of the latest machine learning techniques, we can dramatically reduce the cost and time required for network optimization at network deployment time and throughout the life of the network. Thanks to Airtel and O-RAN ALLIANCE for hosting this event."

About Mavenir

Mavenir is the industry's only end-to-end, cloud-native Network Software Provider focused on accelerating software network transformation and redefining network economics for Communications Service Providers (CSPs). Mavenir offers a comprehensive end-to-end product portfolio across every layer of the mobile network stack. From mobile core, mobile access/edge and mobile services, Mavenir leads the way in evolved, cloud-native networking solutions enabling innovative and secure experiences for end users. Leveraging innovations in IMS (VoLTE, VoWiFi, Advanced Messaging (RCS)), Private Networks as well as vEPC, 5G Core and OpenRAN vRAN, Mavenir accelerates network transformation for more than 250+ CSP customers in over 120 countries, which serve over 50% of the world's subscribers.

Mavenir embraces disruptive, innovative technology architectures and business models that drive service agility, flexibility, and velocity. With solutions that propel NFV evolution to achieve web-scale economics, Mavenir offers solutions to help CSPs with cost reduction, revenue generation, and revenue protection. www.mavenir.com.

About Bharti Airtel

Headquartered in India, Airtel is a global telecommunications company with operations in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa. The company ranks amongst the top three mobile operators globally and its mobile network covers a population of over two billion people. Airtel is India's largest integrated telecom provider and the second largest mobile operator in Africa. At the end of September 2020, Airtel had approx. 440 mn customers across its operations.

Airtel's portfolio includes high speed 4G/4.5G mobile broadband, Airtel Xstream Fiber that promises speeds upto 1Gbps, converged digital TV solutions through the Airtel Xstream 4K Hybrid Box, digital payments through Airtel Payments Bank as well as an integrated suite of services across connectivity, collaboration, cloud and security that serves over one million businesses.

Airtel's OTT services include Airtel Thanks app for self-care, Airtel Xstream app for video, Wynk Music for entertainment and Airtel BlueJeans for video conferencing. In addition, Airtel has forged strategic partnerships with hundreds of companies across the world to enable the Airtel platform to deliver an array of consumer and enterprise services.