Airtel provides IoT services for enterprises across different industries such as automobile, energy, utilities, logistics, financial services and manufacturing
Indian operator Bharti Airtel announced that its B2B division Airtel Business, has already connected over 20 million devices through its IoT solutions across India.
The company said that its Airtel IoT service provides enterprises across different industries such as automobile, energy, utilities, logistics, financial services and manufacturing with a secure and dedicated private network for the safe transmission of all customer data across connected devices. Some of the key wins for Airtel in the recent times include a partnership with Secure Meters for the deployment of 1.3 million smart meters in Bihar via NB-IoT technology, a partnership with TP Western Odisha Distribution Limited (TPWODL) — a joint venture between Government of Odisha and Tata Power for the deployment of 200,000 smart meters in Odisha and a partnership with Matter Motor Works to power 300,000 bikes through cellular IoT.
Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, CEO of Airtel Business India said: “IoT is a key pillar in India’s digital growth journey and, as a brand powering this journey with our future-ready technology solutions for connected devices, we are delighted to achieve this significant milestone of 20 million connected devices on our platform. We will continue to partner with enterprises to enable their digital transformation journey with our innovative IoT solutions”.
The company said its portfolio includes solutions such as asset tracking, vehicle telematics, industrial asset monitoring and smart metering, among others. These IoT-based services are offered via different technologies such as 5G, 4G, NB-IoT, 2G and satellite.
Bharti Airtel’s CEO Gopal Vittal said that the operator expects its 5G service to reach 7,000 cities and nearly 100,000 villages across India by March 2024.
Airtel’s 5G offering currently reaches over 3,500 towns and cities at a national level.
In October 2022, Bharti Airtel initially launched 5G services in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Siliguri, Nagpur and Varanasi.
Airtel is currently using equipment from Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung to provide 5G services. The Indian operator had secured a total of 19,800 megahertz of spectrum in the 900 MHz, 1.8 GHz, 2.1 GHz, 3.3 GHz and 26 GHz bands in a previous auction carried out by the Indian government.
Recent reports revealed that Bharti Airtel is engaged in talks with nearly 50 companies to co-develop enterprise use cases in the 5G field. Airtel expects that the 5G technology will generate more revenue in the business-to-business (B2B) segment compared to the business-to-consumer (B2C) segment in the coming year.
