Airtel Tests India's First Private 5G Network

Bharti Airtel has announced the successful launch of India's first 5G private network at the Bosch Automotive Electronics India (RBAI) facility in Bengaluru.

Airtel's on-premise 5G Captive Private Network was built using the Department of Telecom's trial 5G spectrum (DoT).
Using the trial spectrum, the telco implemented two industrial-grade use cases for quality improvement and operational efficiency at Bosch's manufacturing facility. 5G technology, such as mobile broadband and low latency communications, drove automated operations in both cases, allowing for faster scale-up and reduced downtime.

The private network established on the trial spectrum at the facility is capable of managing multiple connected devices and delivering multi-GBPS throughput.

The 5G captive private network aided the Bosch Manufacturing Execution System in significantly reducing the time required to assess the quality of surface-mounted devices using Automatic Optical Inspection (AOI). Bosch Manufacturing Execution System made the process more efficient by ensuring faster data transfer over a reliable and secure network to an AI/ML server for real-time decision making (MES).

The 5G network's low latency and high speed also assisted Bosch shop floor managers and operators in identifying and resolving issues in real-time, reducing mean time to repair (MTTR) and mean time between failures (MTBF).