Airtel is currently using equipment from Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung to provide 5G services across India
Swedish vendor Ericsson has secured a new multi-billion dollar contract for selling 5G equipment from Indian carrier Bharti Airtel, Reuters reported, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
Much of the deployment stipulated in this new deal is likely to happen next year, according to one source.
The report noted that the new contracts are expected to boost Ericsson’s revenue in 2025 after the vendor experienced a decline in contracts from India in the first half of the year.
Sales in Southeast Asia, Oceania, and India had decreased by 44% in the second quarter, according to the report.
The new contract comes after Ericsson got part of a $3.6 billion contract last month for selling 5G equipment to India’s Vodafone Idea. Rival vendors Nokia and Samsung also secured part of the contract with Vodafone Idea. Vodafone Idea noted that the deal marks the first step towards the implementation of the company’s three-year capex plan of nearly $6.6 billion. The capex program is directed towards expanding the 4G population coverage from current 1.03 billion people to 1.2 billion people, launching 5G technology in key markets as well as network capacity expansion in line with data growth.
Airtel is currently using equipment from Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung to provide 5G services.
Bharti Airtel ended its first fiscal quarter of 2025 on June 30, with a total of 90 million 5G subscribers, the telco’s managing director, Gopal Vittal, said during a previous conference call with investors.
The executive noted that the company had ended the previous fiscal quarter with 72 million customers in the 5G field.
The executive highlighted that Bharti Airtel is expecting to launch Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) via 5G Standalone (5G SA) architecture. “We are planning to go live with SA technology for FWA within [fiscal] Q2. It should be noted that our core, transport and radio networks are all SA-ready,” Vittal added.
Bharti Airtel previously confirmed that it has started re-farming its existing mid-band spectrum with the main aim of accommodating the growing traffic demand on its 5G network. To accommodate the growing number of customers migrating to its 5G network, Airtel said it is in the process of re-farming its mid-band spectrum to expand 5G services on its 1.8 GHz, 2.1 GHz and 2.3 GHz bands across India.
The Indian operator had secured a total of 19,800 megahertz of spectrum in the 900 MHz, 1.8 GHz, 2.1 GHz, 3.3 GHz and 26 GHz bands in a previous auction carried out by the Indian government in July 2022. In June, the telco secured additional spectrum to expand its 5G offering.
