Bharti Airtel is opening up its 5G network capabilities to third‑party developers and enterprises across India via a new collaboration with Nokia. The move aims to enable a wider ecosystem of digital solutions using Airtel's pan‑India network assets.
The partnership will see Airtel's network application programming interfaces (APIs) made available through Nokia's ‘Network as Code’ platform and its developer portal. These APIs span 5G, edge computing, AI-driven network functions, and other advanced network capabilities. They will be subscribed to by developers, system integrators and enterprises following successful trials.
The collaboration opens up core network capabilities through standardized APIs and allows developers to build customized digital services without managing the underlying telecom infrastructure. This will help unlock new monetization opportunities for the telecom operator while enabling innovation across various industry verticals.
“We are happy to partner with Nokia today for network APIs and enable the ecosystem to leverage our network capabilities for automation and building secure and innovative digital services,” said Sharat Sinha, CEO of Airtel Business.
Meanwhile, Arvind Khurana, Head of Cloud and Network Services, India, at Nokia, termed the move ‘a significant step’ in expanding the Network as Code ecosystem and underscored Nokia’s commitment to helping operators monetise network investments while fueling innovation in the developer community.
Nokia further noted that its Network as Code platform now boasts a global partner ecosystem of over 60 organisations from telecom operators and data‑centre players to CPaaS providers, system integrators, and vertical industry software vendors.
The move is seen by industry watchers as part of a larger trend of turning legacy telecom networks into programmable, service-oriented platforms, Network-as-a-Service, abbreviated as NaaS.
With this, Airtel and Nokia aim to speed up the onboarding of new generation applications and enable new digital services in the rapidly changing telecom ecosystem in India by opening up network APIs for 5G, Artificial Intelligence, and Edge Computing to developers.