Benefits of Airtel-Nokia Merger The partnership of Airtel and Nokia will open the vast opportunity of Industry 4.0 revolution with private LTE for all the enterprises in India. Not only this, the merger will deliver an extensive private wireless portfolio which will come with high security, mission-critical reliability and broad coverage to cater the growing demand for a network which will support a high volume of data with low latency range along with the vast array of telecom portfolio of Bharti Airtel. Industry 4.0 entirely relies on low-latency and top reliable networks. Not only this, Industry 4.0 has the capabilities to drive new levels of work automation and exchange in manufacturing industries, which results in reduced costs and better operational efficiency. As the LTE Technology has evolved, it has resulted in reliable, secure and high connectivity for digitalisation. As per an estimation report by ABI, Private wireless networking market opportunity has the potential to be a 16 Billion Dollars entity by 2025. Airtel and Nokia have deployed trials of Industry 4.0 Applications To show the potential of the merger, the telecom giants have deployed Industry 4.0 applications at Nokia’s state of art telecommunication equipment factory on January 10, 2020, in Chennai. The deployment created a secure LTE Technology along with low-latency to maximize efficiency and productivity. On the announcement of the merger, CEO of Airtel Business stated that “they are happy to expand their strategic partnership with Nokia to build cutting edge Industry 4.0 solutions for enterprises. Airtel works with the ambition to be a key enabler for digital transformation for businesses and serve the massive demand of technology.” However, Bharti Airtel has shown their disinterest in the latest Spectrum pricing recommended by Trai. Airtel has mentioned that they will not participate in the Spectrum auction if the base price is fixed at Rs 492 crore per megahertz. Bharti Goel, who is the MD and CEO for India and South Asia Region, stated that the 5G Spectrum prices recommended by Trai are too high and Airtel will not pick it up at the recommended prices.
