“Neural Manufacturing” solutions the focus of Airtel 5G demos
Indian operator Bharti Airtel and compatriot company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said they have successfully tested innovative use cases from TCS’ Neural Manufacturing solutions suite on Airtel’s 5G network.
Airtel has been allocated 5G trial spectrum by India’s Department of Telecommunications for the purpose of technology validation. Airtel has rolled out #5GforBusiness initiative and is partnering with leading technology companies to demonstrate a wide range of enterprise grade use cases using 5G.
The solutions tested by the two partners help manufacturers build smart, cognitive factories which mimic resilient and adaptive behaviours as well as enable remote robotic operations in potentially hazardous environments like mining, chemical plants and oil & gas fields.
TCS successfully tested two use cases on Airtel’s 5G testbed – remote robotics operations, and vision-based quality inspection, demonstrating how TCS’ Neural Manufacturing solutions and 5G technology can transform industrial operations, and significantly boost quality, productivity and safety. The demonstration was done at Airtel’s 5G Lab in Manesar.
Randeep Sekhon, CTO at Bharti Airtel, said “Airtel is spearheading 5G in India. The 5G ecosystem will open limitless possibilities for enterprises to enhance productivity and serve their customers even better with digitally enabled applications. We are delighted to work with TCS as our strategic technology partner to start testing real life 5G applications of the future. This also offers tremendous learnings across the value chain and lays a solid foundation for future application roadmap.”
“We believe the future of manufacturing is neural, and have been making sustained investments in research, and innovation, and in building intellectual property. We will continue to build new, differentiated capabilities into TCS’ Neural Manufacturing suite of solutions, harnessing the power of machine vision, machine intelligence and 5G to reimagine and redefine the way smart factories operate. Our partnership with Airtel to deploy and validate these innovative use cases on their 5G network serves as a proof point of the transformative power of these technologies,” said Susheel Vasudevan, Global Head of Manufacturing & Utilities at TCS.
As part of the #5GforBusiness initiative, Airtel is joining forces with Accenture, AWS, Cisco, Ericsson, Google Cloud, Nokia and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to work with industry brands such as Apollo Hospitals, Flipkart and several leading manufacturing companies to test 5G based solutions.
Airtel noted that these solutions will be deployed on 5G test spectrum awarded to Airtel and include use cases like Smart Factory, Smart Healthcare, 5G powered Quality inspection, Digital Twin, connected frontline workforce and AR/VR based use cases.
Bharti Airtel has recently launched what it claims to be India’s first 5G trial in the 700 MHz spectrum band in partnership with Finnish vendor Nokia. The 5G trial was conducted on the outskirts of Kolkata and it was also the first 5G trial in Eastern India.
Airtel and Nokia were able to achieve high speed wireless broadband network coverage of 40 Kilometers between two 3GPP standard 5G sites in real life conditions. Airtel used equipment from Nokia’s 5G portfolio, which included Nokia AirScale radios and standalone (SA) core.
Headquartered in India, Airtel is a global communications solutions provider with over 474 million customers in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa.
