Finnish telecom gear maker Nokia has bagged a multi-terabit optical transport network deployment deal from Bharti Airtel as India?s second-largest telecom operator ramps up its 5G network and broadband deployments across the country.

Under the deal, Nokia will deploy its ?1830 PSS-x OTN? switches in Airtel?s National Long-Distance (NLD) network connecting major cities across India, as per a statement by the vendor on Tuesday.

The increased capacity will enable Airtel to potentially deliver faster and more reliable broadband services and be ready for new use cases, said Nokia.

Nokia said that its OTN solution enables Bharti Airtel to seamlessly upgrade its legacy transport switching infrastructure across its pan-Indian network footprint to meet new transport network traffic demands while improving both the performance and reliability of its network.

It noted that the launch of 5G networks and the push for broadband connectivity across India is increasing demands for telecom operators, including augmentation of backhaul transport for denser 5G mobile networks, wholesale connectivity for new segments like smart grids, datacenter interconnect (DCI) and other business services.

To address this exponential growth in traffic demand, transport networks need to be upgraded to increase overall transport capacity and bandwidth efficiency using high-capacity OTN switching and utilising additional spectrum including the L-band wavelengths of the fiber, it added.

?As a world leader in OTN, our technology will help Airtel to increase the capacity and features of Bharti?s optical transport network to meet growing bandwidth demand driven by the enterprise and hyperscaler segments. It will also provide the service level performance to meet the strict SLAs from Airtel customers,? said Chandan Kumar, Head of Optical Network Business Centre for Nokia India, in a statement.