---
title: India's Airtel gearing up for 5G with Ciena - Developing Telecoms
description: Bharti Airtel, India's second-largest communications solutions provider, has implemented Ciena's photonic infrastructure to add capacity by up to three times to its optic fiber network in cities to deliver an enhanced 5G experience.
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Bharti Airtel, India's second-largest communications solutions provider, has implemented Ciena's photonic infrastructure to add capacity by up to three times to its optic fiber network in cities to deliver an enhanced 5G experience.

According to a press release from the networking systems, services and software company, Airtel has deployed Ciena’s 600G and 800G photonic solutions in multiple metro cities of India, including Bangalore, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Delhi.

It allows Airtel to fast-track 5G and support high-growth cloud applications while lowering the cost per bit, said the release.

Randeep Sekhon, CTO of Bharti Airtel said, “Airtel was the country’s first telco to demonstrate live 5G service over a commercial network. As we work to deploy 5G more widely, Ciena plays an integral role in providing an agile network foundation to satisfy our customers’ dynamic requirements.”

Ryan Perera, Vice President, and General Manager, Ciena India said, “The future of data consumption across India is at the edge – in homes, trains, hospitals, automobiles, factories, and many other mission-critical environments. By investing in its metro network with Ciena’s industry-leading technology, Airtel is ideally positioned to support the booming digital economy.”

To improve resiliency and service availability in cities where fiber cuts are common, Airtel has implemented a self-optimizing network design using an advanced C&L-band infrastructure with Layer 0 control plane with Ciena’s 6500 Reconfigurable Line System (RLS).

Airtel can also proactively localize, troubleshoot, and rapidly repair fiber fault conditions with Ciena’s Liquid Spectrum PinPoint OTDR software analytics. Additionally, to maximize the efficiency of the network and allow for quick turn-up of new high-bandwidth services, Airtel has deployed WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optics along with Manage, Control, and Plan (MCP) domain controller.

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