Customer profile

Bharti Airtel is a leading mobile telecom operator in India. Over the past few years, large operators in India have begun accelerating their pace of consolidation and smaller operators have been pushed out of the market. In this incredibly competitive mobile communications market, Bharti Airtel is facing huge pressure. In early 2017, Bharti Airtel decided to reestablish its position as a leader in the Indian 4G market. Among 1.1 billion Indian users, over 70% are 2G users. Despite this, Bharti Airtel proposed a focus on LTE network build-out starting in 2017.

Business challenges

LTE coverage and capacity can no longer meet ever-increasing demands

The Indian LTE market is growing rapidly, evident from the rapid increases in user base and data traffic. In many states such as KTK, data traffic on LTE networks has noticeably grown four times in three months. 4G phones are becoming mainstream in the device market. However, Bharti Airtel has deployed few LTE base stations and has no LTE stations that are running on the low band. The operator also faces a shortage in spectrum for deploying LTE. As a result, its LTE coverage and capacity can no longer meet ever-increasing demands.

Lack of spectrum resources, hefty prices of new spectrum

Bharti Airtel decided to increase LTE network coverage and capacity, but faced a shortage in spectrum resources. The cost would have been extremely high for the operator to increase LTE capacity and coverage by purchasing new spectrum licenses, as these licenses are incredibly expensive in India. In KTK, for example, the unit price of the 900MHz band is as high as US$86 million/MHz, with the price increasing to US$112 million/MHz for 700MHz.

The existing spectrum cannot be shared with LTE using traditional technology

Another method that can be used is refarming the existing spectrum. However, in KTK, Bharti Airtel has used 8.8MHz of bandwidth in the 900MHz band for GSM and UMTS, and the data traffic on GSM and UMTS is still growing. The operator could not use the spectrum refarming technology to deploy LTE on the existing 900MHz band.

Solution

Bharti Airtel and Huawei began joint innovation in CloudAIR

Huawei recommended its innovative CloudAIR solution to Bharti Airtel to help the company address its problems. In February 2017, Bharti Airtel and Huawei began joint innovation on CloudAIR. The operator required Huawei to test the spectrum cloudification solution and validate whether it could be commercially used, seeking to rapidly deploy LTE on the existing spectrum band. If this could be achieved, Bharti Airtel could increase LTE coverage and capacity, build its brand image in LTE, and support its VoLTE strategy.

CloudAIR enables dynamic spectrum sharing among multiple RATs and frees up the spectrum for LTE deployment

Huawei's CloudAIR solution allowed Bharti Airtel to dynamically share the GSM and UMTS spectrum and allocate 3MHz of bandwidth in the 900MHz band to LTE for lower-band coverage. The operator successfully deployed three radio access technologies (RATs), i.e. GSM, UMTS, and LTE, on the 900MHz band within an 8.8MHz spectral bandwidth. The operator also constructed cells (U2100 and G1800) in UMTS and GSM hotspots to handle the additional capacity.

CloudAIR provides LTE coverage on the low band and saves TCO. Different from the traditional refarming solution, CloudAIR allows dynamic spectrum sharing among different RATs. With this innovative solution, on-demand spectrum allocation is replacing static allocation and maximizing spectrum efficiency and value. Before CloudAIR was used, GSM and UMTS shared 8.8MHz spectral bandwidth. After the solution was used, GSM and UMTS shared 5.8MHz spectral bandwidth, with 3MHz being released for LTE.

CloudAIR helps the operator make full use of precious air interface resources

Air interfaces are the most precious resource of mobile network operators. Huawei's CloudAIR solution offers cloudified air interfaces, which enable efficient sharing of air interface resources, including spectrum and power and channel. With this solution, the operator can utilize air interfaces more efficiently, deploy networks more flexibly, and offer a better user experience.

CloudAIR offers spectrum cloudification and enables the deployment of different RATs on the same band. With this solution, spectrum resources can be dynamically allocated based on changes in traffic volume. The solution also maximizes spectrum efficiency, provides rapid coverage of new RATs, and prevents the the most valuable spectrum from being exclusively occupied by outdated RATs. In addition, the solution allows the deployment of multiple services on the limited low band.

CloudAIR also offers power cloudification, which supports power sharing and on-demand power allocation across multiple carriers, RATs, and frequency bands.

Channel cloudification is another feature of CloudAIR. Empowered by AI, the solution selects antenna resources from multiple adjacent cells, with users at the center. Signals received from these cells improve, rather than compromise, communications quality. This can make cell selection easier and significantly improve user experience.

Benefits to the customer

Significantly improved LTE experience

CloudAIR has brought significant benefits to Bharti Airtel. First, LTE coverage increased dramatically. In suburbs, L900 cells offer increases of 1.4x in the covered radius and 2x in the covered area compared with L1800 cells. CloudAIR requires 33% fewer cells to achieve the same area of coverage as the solution of adding L1800 cells. Second, data traffic on LTE networks rose sharply. Data traffic in the 900MHz band rose by 65% and the traffic on LTE networks increased by 10%.

"CloudAIR gives us the ability to deploy LTE, within the same 900MHz frequency, alongside GSM and UMTS," said Mr. Abhay Savargaonkar, CTO of Bharti Airtel. "Mobile users will enjoy faster mobile networks and more advanced technology, such as carrier aggregation. This improves our LTE coverage significantly, which means our customers can enjoy superior data experience and HD voice quality even in indoor locations."

TCO savings

CloudAIR expands network capacity primarily through the use of software, without need to add new cells, saving Bharti Airtel's investment costs. According to estimations, the CloudAIR solution can drive major reductions in TCO for Bharti Airtel. It is 50% cheaper than buying 3MHz of bandwidth in the 700MHz band; 37% cheaper than buying 3MHz in the 900MHz band; and 30% cheaper than buying 1.2MHz in the 900MHz band and sharing the existing 8.8MHz of bandwidth.

CloudAIR 1.0 was released in November 2016. As of the end of 2017, the solution has helped more than 30 mobile operators improve network performance and user experience. Over the past year, Huawei kept innovating and making breakthroughs with the solution. Huawei will announce CloudAIR 2.0 in Q2 2018. The new version will offer an enhanced function of spectrum cloudification and two new functions of power cloudification and channel cloudification. The solution will accommodate multiple RATs and frequency bands, better helping operators increase spectrum efficiency and accelerate 5G deployment. It is forecasted that over 100 commercial CloudAIR networks will be deployed by the end of 2018.