Optical fibre cable (OFC) networks are instrumental in unlocking the next stage of digital transformation in the Indian telecom landscape. Both OFC manufacturers such as STL and telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel have been playing a crucial role in expanding fibre connectivity in the country. However, there are certain challenges that these stakeholders face that need to be ironed out to propel growth. At tele.net’s recent conference on “OFC Networks in India”, Dr Badri Gomatam, group chief technology officer, STL, and Dharmender Khajuria, head, network partnerships, Bharti Airtel Limited, spoke about the expanding OFC landscape and key challenges faced in infrastructure expansion. Edited excerpts…
Dr Badri Gomatam
Today, both overhead and underground fibre networks are deployed in a largely labour-intensive manner. However, once the deployment is done, you do not have a digitalised way of monitoring the physical network. It is challenging for an operator to figure out where the fibre is at any given point, who is touching it, whether somebody intends to cut it, and if so, exactly where.
Early warning signals for physical network failure still remain an aspiration. The lack of infrastructural awareness, as well as situational awareness, leads to network interruption. It is a huge cost to both the end customer as well as the service provider.
Performance degradation is another aspect to consider. When comparing statistics, the US has 0.2 cuts per month per 1,000 km, whereas India has 10-12 cuts, depending on whether the area is rural or urban. The US has a lot of situational awareness and a highly regulated industry in terms of operational maintenance, which we do not have in India.
In the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standard, for single-mode fibre, the end-of-life specification is 0.4 dB per km. In India, it is very difficult to find networks that are lower than this value. We work extremely hard to make fibre and cable and then we strive hard to sell them at 0.2 dB per km.
It is our perspective that there are four technology enablers, which when combined, will revolutionise the transition of the outside plant’s operations and maintenance. In terms of technology, there are four elements – distributed acoustic sensing, followed by machine learning (ML), geo-location and geographic information system mapping, and cloud.
Acoustic sensing makes use of the fibre itself as a physical sensor. It operates similar to an optical time domain reflectometer, which is used by every installer today to install fibre and maintain it. It is commendable that after the fibre is deployed using acoustic sensing, you can pinpoint the location of a physical disturbance within a few feet. If someone touches the fibre, or walks through the cable, or cuts, or digs, this can be pointed out with great accuracy by those instruments. It can be used in pre-existing fibre, eliminating the need to lay new fibre. It reflects disturbances as patterns that can be further recognised by ML. With the data already present within the installer’s route, you have a clear idea about where the damage is going to occur. This pinpointing of location cuts down the average mean time to repair.
One of the interesting use cases is the concept of a flap. It is the network that goes down for a few minutes and then comes back and usually you blame the router, but it turns out that someone may have accidentally touched the fibre while trying to fix something in a manhole. This results in a temporary failure. However, if you are an enterprise customer, a temporary failure of more than 50 milliseconds triggers a network restoration. We were able to show that up to 10 minutes before the flap, there are enough events for individuals to come in, stand around the manhole, lift the manhole, open the joint closure, fiddle with the tray and then trigger the network downtime, so it gets restored. This improves the service level agreement to a great extent, in terms of the relationship between service providers and end-customers.
Finally, one may look at a geo-map, putting the entire network on a visible cloud-enabled platform that could transmit intelligence to find restoration. The vision is to bring the entire physical network under one digital platform. The benefits include reduced capital expenditure (capex), enhanced security in asset protection, maintenance and fault detection and most importantly, maximise network life so that you do not have to keep patching and fixing networks so frequently. However, it is a challenge to reduce the right-of-way (RoW) cost while maintaining or increasing the life of fibre.
Dharmender Khajuria
Our prime minister has already laid out the vision for Digital India. We need to fiberise all towers across the country to fulfil that vision. From Airtel’s standpoint, we have crossed 275,000 towers, and the number is growing every month. Tower fiberisation in the country is around 35 per cent currently. This implies that there is still a lot more fiberisation to be done.
If we want to take full advantage of 5G and realise the use cases that we have been envisioning, such as autonomous cars and robotic surgery, these are only possible if there is backhaul. Fiberisation should be used for 5G backhaul. This is the first step.
The kind of support we got from the government during the past one and a half years is outstanding. RoW Rules came in 2016 and new rules were issued in August 2022, which were a game changer in terms of defining RoW rates. If we use the poles laid out by any municipality or discom, the rates are clearly defined. This means that we can have last-mile connectivity on overhead fibre in a legal way. Currently, 18 out of 36 states and union territories have already adopted the new policy and the rest of the states are in the process of doing the same.
The issue arises when a state adopts a policy, but municipalities, which are independent bodies, have their revenue model based on certain kinds of activities that internet service providers or telecom service providers engage in the market and they do not want to give up that revenue, per se. However, I think the time has come that we start treating OFC and other digital assets as national assets. Further, states should engage in discussions with municipalities at the local level to convince them that this is not the revenue model they should be considering. Rather, they should consider the bigger picture because the types of 5G use cases that could emerge can create a completely new scenario in the state.
However, while RoW rules have been well defined, these are guidelines and thus, not mandatory. Laying down fibre and digging the road is a state subject. So that gap remains because this is not a law that has to be followed. The Department of Telecommunications has been undertaking efforts to review the implementation of policies with all the state secretaries. Adoption is, therefore, not a problem. The only question is how we ensure that this gets implemented at the ground level, municipality level, or ward level. Clarity of policies is unlikely to exist till we reach the ward level. The policy must be made very clear to all municipalities by the state secretary of rural development and the secretary of urban development, which is the nodal agency for the adoption of the policy.
The new amendments to the Indian Telegraph Rules were notified in August 2022, with many states adopting them within a couple of months. But the adoption of these rules at just the state level is not helping the industry, as local bodies such as city municipalities are autonomous bodies who may or may not follow these rules, subverting the intent of the policy.
The need of the hour is for states to make that these local bodies understand the importance of telecom and the role of fibre in enabling multiple businesses, that in turn contribute to the state exchequer by way of levies/taxes.
The telecom industry has been working closely with state bureaucracies to ensure the adoption of these forward-looking rules. Though the progress has been slow, we are sure that these industry-bureaucracy interactions will help us in creating solid digital infrastructure in the near future.
Another issue is that when the overhead fibre is legally laid, the city cleanliness department or G20 drives may tamper with it without knowing that hundreds of customers who are working from home will suffer the consequences.
Furthermore, there are a lot of cable operators who are not paying municipalities and are simply laying fibre, with much dead fibre already in place. Nobody removes that fibre and it has an impact. One cannot do away with overhead fibre because the last-mile connectivity cannot be realised. This is what municipalities should understand and they should collaborate closely with us in order to realise the dream of Digital India – that every person, urban or rural, gets connected and takes advantage of the digital infrastructure.
