Reliance Jio's 5G Standalone (SA) network successfully handled 20 million voice and 400 million data service requests on the peak day at the recently concluded Maha Kumbh at Prayagraj, telecom gear maker Ericsson and telecom operator Jio said on Thursday. An estimated 55 per cent of the total data traffic during the event was served by Ericsson 5G solutions.
The spiritual event, held between January 13 and February 26, saw participation from over 660 million people. During this period, an unprecedented traffic surge was also observed in Varanasi and Ayodhya, the companies said.
In preparation for the high density of visitors expected during the Maha Kumbh, Ericsson and Jio collaborated to implement strategic solutions across the Jio True 5G SA network using SA features such as network slicing, carrier aggregation using the 700 MHz band, and Voice over NR (5G voice).
To further support LTE traffic demand, a 10 MHz spectrum in the 700 MHz band was deployed without additional hardware or physical changes. "This rapid deployment significantly alleviated congestion, handling 10 per cent of enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) traffic and 25 per cent of voice traffic on the overall LTE network," Ericsson said.
Ericsson’s Automated Radio Resource Partitioning feature for network slicing helped Jio secure existing Fixed Wireless Access performance while ensuring the eMBB performance, it added.

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