BARCELONA: Telecom major Bharti Airtel has said it will soon start offering voice call services for its 4G customers in India through its existing GSM network.
The company has selected Nokia Siemens Network to deploy technology which will enable company offer voice services to 4G customers in Pune, Bharti Airtel said in a statement.
It offers 4G services in the cities of Kolkata, Bangalore and Pune.
Using NSN technology, Airtel network can transfer customers to GSM platform to make and receive voice calls and access voicemails while retaining the experience of data (internet) services on 4G smartphones.
“The solution will enable our 4G customers to enjoy high-quality voice services on GSM network and ultra-fast data services on TD-LTE platform thereby allowing them to have a unified experience on a 4G handset,” Airtel’s CTO and Director Jagbir Singh said in a statement.
He added that Airtel has the advantage of pan-India GSM and 3G networks and with the deployment new technology from NSN, the company will have the flexibility of using either or both the networks to support voice services on its 4G platform.
“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,” NSN’s head of Mobile Broadband portfolio management Thorsten Robrecht said.
-PTI
