Bharti Airtel to offer GSM Voice Services to LTE Customers

Bharti Airtel has selected Nokia Siemens Networks to launch voice services for its TD-LTE customers in Pune, India, through its existing GSM network.

Specifically, Bharti Airtel has selected NSN to deploy its Circuit Switched FallBack (CSFB) voice solution in the operator’s live TD-LTE network in the city. With CSFB, the network can transfer customers to GSM platform to make and receive voice calls and access voicemails while retaining the experience of ultra-fast data services on 4G smartphones.

Thorsten Robrecht, head of Mobile Broadband portfolio management at Nokia Siemens Networks, said, “This achievement of enabling world-first voice call fallback from TD-LTE to GSM in live network is yet another milestone in our efforts to strengthen the commercialization and deployment of TD-LTE technology globally. Our CSFB assures a successful and reliable mechanism for voice services alongside any LTE data service.”

Nokia Siemens Networks deployed its radio network elements in addition to its voice core and packet core network elements, including its Flexi Multiradio Base Station, its Mobile Softswitching (MSS) systems and its Liquid Core-based Evolved Packet Core (EPC) platform, including Flexi NS (Network Server) and Flexi NG (Network Gateway). Nokia Siemens Networks’ network management system NetAct has been implemented to monitor, manage and optimize the whole network.

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