Airtel claims Tejas gear in BSNL’s network is causing signal interference

Details: John Tanner; Category: Wireless Networks; 24 November 2025; 9586 views

Indian telco Bharti Airtel has reportedly accused domestic telecoms vendor Tejas Networks of installing "sub-standard equipment" in Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL's) 4G network, which Airtel claims is disrupting its network in the Rajasthan circle.

A report from ETTelecom on Saturday cited a letter sent from Airtel to Tejas on November 14 complaining that BSNL’s 4G network – which uses the 800-MHz spectrum band – has been interfering with Airtel’s operations in the 900-MHz band, with neither BSNL nor Tejas taking any action to correct the problem.

Airtel claims the problem is the filter design of Tejas’ radio equipment, which is designed for the 864-894 MHz frequency range. However, in India, the 800-MHz downlink is limited to between 869-889 MHz, which Airtel says has been causing interference problems in the 900-MHz band, the report said.

Tejas told ETTelecom that the problem isn’t with its radio equipment, which is compliant with 3GPP specs and BSNL's own technical requirements for out-of-band emissions, but overlapping spectrum bands in Rajasthan circle.

Tejas said the issue “is being addressed by additional filtering in consultation with DoT, Airtel and BSNL”, the report said.

Tejas Networks is deploying India’s first indigenously developed 4G stack in BSNL’s network. The cloud-based Bharat Telecom Stack – officially unveiled in September – integrates Tejas’s base stations and radio infrastructure with an EPC core network from Center for Development of Telematics (C-DOT). Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) supplies data centres for the stack, as well as its Cognitive Network Operations (TCS CNOPS) platform for 24/7 real-time network management.

The Indian government has been touting the Bharat 4G stack as a milestone in its bid to make India more self-reliant in technology development and establish the country as a global telecoms manufacturing hub.