Del-mum, Hyd-b’luru e-ways to get optical fibre network
NEW DELHI: The upcoming Delhi-mumbai Expressway and Hyderabad-bengaluru Expressway will be the first projects in the country to be enabled with an optical fibre cable network as part of India’s National Broadband Mission (NBM), senior officials in the ministry of road transport and highways (MORTH) said.
Optical fibres will help telecommunications connectivity along the way, allowing, for instance, mobile network companies to use these to create tower relays and offer coverage along these routes. These fibre cable networks will also serve as a crucial backbone for 5G mobile telephone services. Under the NBM, which was launched in December 2019, the government has set a target of 70% fiberisation to take India’s fibre footprint to 5.5 million kilometres by 2024. However, India is yet to hit the 40% mark in laying optical fibre cables so far.
The optical fibre cables will be laid along all upcoming Greenfield and Brownfield expressway corridors. The task of digging and laying these cables has been assigned to the National Highways Logistics Management Limited (NHLML), which is a special purpose vehicle of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
“The OFC (optical fibre cable project) will first be carried out on pilot basis on Delhi-mumbai and Hyderabad-bengaluru expressways. In this, we are aiming to lay OFCS of a total length of 2,000 kilometres. NHLML will create a dark (inactive) fibre infrastructure which stakeholders in the market will be able to use in a direct plug-and-play model, meaning it will be ready to use. We recently completed the OFC feasibility studies for both the expressways,” NHLML CEO Prakash Gaur said.
The OFC project is also significant since the government is working on the Bharatmala Phase-1 project, which includes a network of multi-modal logistic parks and stations with significant junctions along these high speed roadway corridors. These optical fibre networks will then be required to feed connectivity in the upcoming economic zones that will come up along the expressways.