Under the agreement, the two will deploy the Ericsson Cloud VoLTE solution, an offering that delivers VoLTE onto a customer data centre. Additionally, the offering also enables high-definition voice (HD voice) and provides modern communication services across various devices, leveraging LTE, Wifi and 5G.
“We remain committed to building a state-of-the-art future-ready network as part of our network transformation program - Project Leap - and deliver best-in-class digital experience to our smartphone customers,” said Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Bharti Airtel. “This partnership with Ericsson will allow us to rapidly increase VoLTE capacity to serve our growing traffic, and make our network prepared to easily introduce new communication services today and in 5G.”
The Ericsson Cloud VoLTE solution also includes a complete virtual IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and supporting nodes to add VoLTE service to an existing LTE data network, and serves as a foundation to evolve and expand voice and other communication services. In addition, it features pre-integrated and validated design, a trained central delivery team, and delivery assets to ensure a fast, accurate, and optimised solution delivery.
“We are delighted to support Airtel by delivering our Ericsson Cloud VoLTE solution, which will provide them with a high-quality, modern, cloud-based solution for today’s and tomorrow’s communication service’s needs. We start today with expanding HD voice over LTE services across India, which will establish a platform to easily introduce new innovative services in the future,” added Nunzio Mirtillo, head of market area South East Asia, Oceania and India, Ericsson.
According to Ericsson’s 2018 Mobility report, India is expected to reach more than 780 million VoLTE subscriptions by 2023. VoLTE technology will also form the foundation pf 5G calls on various 5G devices.
