According to Digital Infrastructure Providers Association (DIPA), India needs to cover more than 35,00,000 km with fibre across the country between the fiscal year 2023 and 2025 to enable 5G networks and facilitate edge data centres and small cells. DIPA also called on the government to permit the sharing of optical fibre cable (OFC) among telecom companies, an idea being explored globally, to help telcos realise CAPEX and OPEX savings.
In a letter to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), TR Dua, director general, DIPA, said that in comparison to fibre, microwave is cheaper, scalable and can be deployed more quickly. Conventional microwave wireless-based backhaul cannot support 5G’s multi-gigabit speed requirements. This necessitates OFC deployment to enable 5G networks.
He further noted that the soaring dollar is expected to have a marginal impact on the network CAPEX of telcos in the fiscal year 2023. While fiberisation can be achieved through domestic procurement, base transceiver station (BTS) procurement highly relies on imports. Dua suggested that this could be overcome through OFC sharing which will allow telcos to save on CAPEX and OPEX, as well as achieve higher cash flows.
DIPA proposed that infrastructure providers will lay the fibre which can then be shared with service providers in a non-discriminatory manner. Multiple digging over the same route can be avoided. The overall cost of the project will be optimised and facilitate 5G rollout strategies of service providers.
