The Fiber Promise

Radius and Sterlite are the only neutral players active in the FTTH space, but there are many fence sitters closely evaluating before taking a final plunge

Radius and Sterlite are the only neutral players active in the FTTH space, but there are many fence sitters closely evaluating before taking a final plunge

Consumption of data is increasing exponentially and so is the need for high-speed networks. And this need will keep on surging with applications like high-speed internet, video streaming, and faster downloads on the rise.

Presently, the required infrastructure to support these lags behind considerably and so fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) as a concept is gaining grounds even in emerging markets, though it has established models across many developed nations of the world today. This technology is also well established in China and other developed economies.

NTP 2012 talks about connecting 175 mn consumers across India with a 2 Mbps broadband network by 2017 and reaching 600 mn consumers by 2020. These numbers would not be easy to achieve unless and until we do city based fiberization as twisted copper cables will not be able to meet the increasing bandwidth requirement of Indian consumers. Even wireless has limitations both in terms of quality bandwidth and the cost at which these hi-speeds would be available to end consumers.

What is FTTH?

According to the FTTH Council, FTTH is the delivery of a communication signal over optical fiber from the operator’s switching equipment all the way to a home or business, thereby replacing existing copper infrastructure such as telephone wires and coaxial cable.

It is a relatively new and fast growing method of providing vastly higher bandwidth to consumers and businesses, and thereby enabling more robust video, internet, and voice services.

Connecting homes directly to fiber optic cable helps in enormous improve- ments in bandwidth speed that can be provided to consumers. Current fiber optic technology can provide 2-way transmission speeds of up to 100 Mbps.

The Business Models

In India, we have 2 FTTH models—NANO and FiON—currently prevailing. NANO platform is developed by Radius Infratel (RIPL), whereas FiON is developed by Sterlite Technologies. Both these models are served through a high-speed fiber link from a service provider to a central Sterlite OLT location (equivalent of an exchange)

The business model is built on sharing capital and operating costs between RIPL, real estate companies, telcos and end consumers. This aligns all stakeholders in a long-term arrangement for mutual benefit. This enables consumers to access services from various service providers on a single converged infrastructure, while simultaneously connecting services like surveillance, access control, energy management, home automation, video intercoms, peer-to-peer connectivity and more to residential users.

NANO claims to be the only network in India, which has integrated voice and video intercom, landline voice, broadband, IPTV, DTH, Wi-Fi, security and surveillance system, prepaid metering system, mobile in-building solutions, building management system, including access control, Model needs to be perfected for Indian environment so that one scale up network in a big way Building clearance and right-of-way acting as major obstacles for FTTH deployment boom barrier control, parking management, visitor management and home automation onto its network.

To promote FTTx infrastructure, Sterlite Technologies has launched FiON. The company is providing FTTx infrastructure in many cities of the country that would not only help in providing higher bandwidth on demand to end consumers, but would also help in deploying any Ethernet-based value added services, be it video on demand, e-learning or home surveillance.

FiON has devised its network with Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON), a high bandwidth shared fiber access technology that is used around the world for FTTH.

Thus, GPON enables FiON to implement FTTH projects wherein it leases the network to service providers and acts as an ‘open access passive network infrastructure operator’, having a single-point responsibility to maintain the network.

Further, the architecture is designed in such a way that the cost is optimized and we are able to offer lowest cost per subscriber, while giving network the best quality and up-times.

From this location, direct fiber links are laid to residential or commercial complexes in the area. A small equipment called ONT is placed in the telecom shaft of a building and from there a CAT6 cable runs into the subscribers’ premise and terminates into a Wi-Fi modem. The services are delivered through the Wi-Fi modem.

Ashish Hastak, CSMO, networks business, Sterlite Technologies, says: “Sterlite Technologies strongly believes that ‘open access’ network is the best way to optimize costs across the value chain so