Airtel deploys India's first private 5G network at Bosch facility

Bharti Airtel announced a successful trial of India's first 5G Private Network at Bosch Automotive Electronics India Pvt Ltd (RBAI) facility in Bengaluru on Friday. Airtel's on-premise 5G Captive Private Network was built over the trial 5G spectrum allocated by the Department of Telecom (DoT).

Airtel said that the company implemented two industrial-grade use cases during the trial, which included improving the operational efficiency and quality improvement at the Bosch facility utilising the trial spectrum. In both cases, 5G technology such as mobile broadband and ultra-reliable low latency communications drove automated operations ensuring faster scale up and reduced downtimes.

The private network set up on the trial spectrum at the Bosch facility has the capability to manage thousands of connected devices along with delivering multi-GBPS throughput. The Private 5G network provides greater reliability, enhanced security, and huge flexibility, freezing the operations from wire-dependency to enable Bosch in achieving the benefits of automated operations.

In any manufacturing setup, quality and efficiency are very important tools to measure. With Airtel 5G Captive Private Network, Bosch Manufacturing Execution System was able to significantly reduce the taken time to assess the quality through Automatic Optical Inspection (AOI) of surface-mounted devices. The process was made efficient by ensuing faster transfer of data over a highly reliable and secure network to an AI/ML server for real-time decision-making by Bosch Manufacturing Execution System.

The blazing fast, low latency, high speed, Airtel 5G also helped Bosch shop floor managers and operators identify and resolve issues in real-time thus reducing the Mean Time Between Failures(MTBF)

Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO, of Airtel Business, said, "Airtel is committed to India's digital transformation and supporting the development of its enterprise as they seek to acquire global scale. We believe that Airtel has the world-class infrastructure, partnerships, and expertise to deliver Captive Private Network Solution in any part of the country and to an enterprise of any size."

Subhash P, Head of Technical Functions, Bosch Automotive Electronics India stated: "The low latency and reliable connectivity provided by the Airtel Private 5G network at our facility which was experienced during the proof of concept is enabling us to enhance our efficiency and our productivity. Usage of 5G will significantly reduce IT wired Infrastructure and enhance the operational efficiency."