Airtel Completes Trial of India’s First 5G Private Network at Bosch Automotive Electronics

Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”) has successfully completed the trial of India’s first 5G Private Network at Bosch Automotive Electronics India Pvt Ltd (RBAI) facility in Bengaluru.

Airtel’s on-premise 5G Captive Private Network was built over the trial 5G spectrum allocated by the Department of Telecom (DoT).

Airtel has implemented two Industrial grade use cases for quality improvement and operational efficiency at Bosch’s state-of-the-art manufacturing 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, freeing the operations from wire-dependency to enable Bosch in achieving the benefits of automated operations, the company said.

Automatic Optical Inspection

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 time taken to assess the quality through Automatic Optical Inspection (AOI) of surface-mounted devices.

The process was made efficient by ensuring 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 (MES).

The 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 To Repair ( MTTR ) and Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF).

“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,” said Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO, Airtel Business.

“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,” said Subhash P, Head of Technical Functions, Bosch Automotive Electronics Indi states.