RailTel, a Mini Ratna CPSU of Ministry of Railways and CloudExtel, a known Full Stack Network as a Service (NaaS) Provider have partnered together to launch India’s first Shared Radio Access Network (RAN) solution for congested locations with the objective of enhancing telecom users’ experience.
More details:
- RailTel and CloudExtel carried out the successful pilot of this project in partnership with Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, Nokia, and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP)’s NaaS Solutions Group, with vital support from the Railways, in one of the most network stressed locations namely Mumbai Central railway station.
- The outcomes of the pilot project have been impressive with 5 times increase in average user speed of mobile data (from 3 Mbps to 15 Mbps) for the mobile phone networks of both Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, while the data consumption jumped up by 20%.
- Locations specifically like traffic junctions, airports, and railway stations are high-density areas for network congestion. Challenges multiply especially in cities like Mumbai which are densely populated.
- The success of the Shared RAN solution holds promise for the customers of such highly populated and highly crowded areas to have better mobile data usage experience.
- In the initial phase, the focus will be on extending this technology at more Railway Stations in Mumbai. Later, more stations may be considered for coverage.
Talking about it Mrs. Aruna Singh, Chairman & Managing Director, RailTel said, “Facilitating seamless connectivity and an enhanced commute experience to passengers at railway stations has been our commitment. The impressive speed and data consumption enabled by Shared RAN has validated our belief in this technology, and we look forward to scaling this in all congested areas serving passengers and telecom operators while reducing the clutter of infrastructure and energy consumption in railway stations”.
Commenting on it, Mr. Kunal Bajaj, Co-Founder and CEO, CloudExtel said,“The extensive consumption of multimedia-rich content and cloud applications are the new normal and will multiply with 5G offerings. In absence of shared RAN solutions, even 5G performance will get hampered in such congested locations, thus substantially compromising the user experience. Shared RAN solutions will become an architectural foundation for upcoming 5G deployments in the country”.
About RailTel:
- RailTel, a “Mini Ratna (Category-I)” Central Public Sector Enterprise under Ministry of Railways, is one of the largest neutral telecom infrastructure & ICT Solutions & Services providers in the country, owning a Pan-India optic fiber network covering several towns & cities and rural areas of the country.
- Along with a strong and reliable network of 61000+ RKM of Optic fibre, RailTel has two MeitY empaneled tier III data centers as well. With its Pan India high-capacity network, RailTel is working towards creating a knowledge society at various fronts and has been selected for implementation of various missionmode projects for the Government of India in the telecom field.
- RailTel offers a bundle of services like, MPLS VPN, Telepresence, leased line, Tower Co-location, Data center services etc. RailTel is also working with the Indian Railways to transform railway stations into digital hubs by providing public Wi-Fi at railway stations across the country and 6100+ stations are live with RailTel’s RailWire Wi-Fi.
About CloudExtel:
- CloudExtel is India’s first full-stack Network as a Service (NaaS) provider, reinventing digital infrastructure connectivity with enhanced coverage, capacity & speed. It caters to telecom operators, internet service providers, data centers, enterprises, and large content providers to address the challenges emerging from the hypergrowth of data consumption in India.
- Through its advanced network solutions, the company has enhanced connectivity in network-stressed, high-footfall iconic locations. CloudExtel caters to 20% of partner-deployed small cell requirements of large Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) through 4000 sites across 300+ towns & districts.
- The imminent global shift to Open RAN (O-RAN) and Network Virtualization is expected to redefine the telecom and internet space. CloudExtel is set to leverage this transition. It is the first neutral host to deploy shared RAN in India, one of less than 10 players globally.
Source: RailTel -Press Release | Image Credit (representational): RailTel
