Interview: Reaching out for last mile with FTTH

From www.ciol.com on June 11, 2009

BANGALORE, INDIA: At your wits’ end owing to slow broadband speed? Time to move on to to fiber.

 Of late, fiber network has emerged as a strong alternative to the existing broadband accessing technology, DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) in India.

The India optical fiber market showed a CAGR of 43 per cent (from 2003-2008), making it the fastest growing market in the world. In no time, India saw an upcoming of VoIP and IPTV usage, which in turn calls for more bandwidth (copper wire has limited bandwidth compared to fiber). 

Low operational and maintenance cost, higher bandwidth and decreasing prices are further augmenting fiber network’s growth, and today, it is all set to enter your homes to cater to speedier broadband requirements.

Telecoms vendor Ericsson recently deployed India’s first-ever residential FTTH-GPON (Fiber-To-The-Home- Gigabit Passive Optical Network) project with Radius Synergies.

P Balaji, vice president, marketing & strategy, Ericsson, says: “Ericsson had its eyes on India’s growing broadband base, ever since it strengthened its IP portfolio with the acquisition of  Entrisphere, way back in 2007. The adoption of fixed broadband access is seeing resurgence at the residential and enterprise levels and FTTH technology will play a critical role in driving this forward.” He was speaking to CIOL with regard to Ericsson’s FTTH launch.

CIOL: The end-to-end fiber access solution from Ericsson is based on EDA 1500 GPON system, which offers the highest capacity available in the market and its Micronet and Ribbonet air-blown fiber, and microcable solutions. Can you elaborate on this?

P Balaji: Ericsson EDA (Ethernet Data Access) 1500 provides the highest capacity GPON solution in the world. Based on a carrier-class platform, EDA 1500 is key for the converged high-capacity, all-IP fiber networks needed for advanced services such as IPTV. It comprises Optical Line Terminal (OLT), Optical Network Terminals (ONTs) and EntriView.

“Ribbonet and Micronet” are ducting and fiber solutions for building the last mile access.

Ericsson’s Ribbonet Air Blown Fiber (ABF) system has been developed specifically to provide fast, efficient and flexible fiber distribution in the drop and premises network for medium to long-distances.

Ericsson Micronet Air Blown Micro Cable system is useful when deploying metropolitan and access networks.

CIOL: Will FTTH solve bandwidth problem in India?

PB: FTTH is the way forward for wireline networks of the future as the need for large bandwidth applications grows. Fiber technology can accommodate such bandwidth requirements for applications and high-speed data transmissions with ease.

Fiber also has duplex transmission ability which means signals can be transmitted both ways-from exchange to customer and vice versa, which plays a vital role in applications such as interactive IPTV.

CIOL: Where do you see the demand coming from, with Indian metros already furnished with copper networks and real estate business is a bit dull?

PB: According to industry experts, the market for FTTH services in India is expected to be much higher than other markets such as the US, because of the huge size of the Indian population.

Penetration of fiber infrastructure has been rising in the Indian cities since the last five years and most of the commercial buildings today have fiber connectivity or fiber ring passes, parallel to existing copper.

For buildings which have pre-existing cable infrastructure inside, Ericsson has two solutions namely FTTC/B (Fiber to the Curb/Building) and FTTH (Fiber to the Home).

Today, condo homes are increasingly becoming popular in India and connected homes is a big trend. Therefore, the need for bandwidth hungry applications is going to be high. Further, the unique business model being followed by companies such as Radius, who built the open access infrastructure in a partnership arrangement, should help create value for developers, facility management companies and service providers.

CIOL: What is the scope of FTTH–GPON technology in India?

PB: Current market estimates indicate that India could be having as many as one million FTTH lines within the next three years. The main driving forces for FTTH in India are high speed, bandwidth applications such as VoIP, IPTV, HDTV, Smart Home etc.

With a marked improvement in performance over DSL, adoption is expected to gain ground leading to reduced cost of services. This will drive users to easily avail FTTH services at home even though they might use other services like normal TV.

We are in discussions with the key market players for FTTH–GPON deployment. The fact that operators are keen to roll out close to a million lines in the next 2-3 years represents the sense of optimism and potential about this domain.

To catalyze the growth of FTTH, we are working with carriers and also promoting initiatives of infrastructure companies such as Radius, who plan to build GPON-based FTTH network and provide open access to all the carriers, on a Pan-India basis.

Being an ITU-T backed technology, GPON has a high degree of acceptance within the carrier community. Although it is true that its benefits are just starting to be realized in India, what is important to note is that leading operators such as BSNL are convinced of its potential and have already begun its adoption. Others too are looking at following suit shortly.

We foresee the growth of FTTH GPON as a network and of “Open access infrastructure based upon GPON–FTTH” as fixed broadband in India. Initiatives like RADIUS NANO – Neutral Access Network Operations – will take the lead on FTTH rollouts.

CIOL: Going forward, what will be the challenges in laying optic fiber in India?

PB: The biggest challenge in FTTH deployment is the passive (fiber access) planning and roll out. As reaching the last mile can be difficult, it is essential to focus on the logical planning of the Access network.

Besides, like any new technology, the market uptake will initially be slow. Therefore, ‘rightsizing’ capacity build out is extremely important. In this regard, Ericsson has a unique proposition because of its own special Air Blown Fiber solution, which makes deployments easy and cost effective, reducing OPEX spends by lowering AMC costs.

System integration is another challenge because of the numerous active, passive infrastructure elements.

CIOL: Won’t high cost of service, compared to DSL networks, be a hindrance to FTTH’s penetration?

PB: There are certain applications which require higher bandwidth for which demand is increasing. In today’s environment, enterprises are looking at continuous 24×7 connectivity as well as quality of service (QoS).

This trend is expected to be also echoed by the residential sector. Hence, while enterprises will show high acceptance and facilitate service uptake in the short to medium term, in the longer term, with IPTV gaining popularity, contribution from the residential sector is likely to increase substantially leading to lower cost of service, higher market penetration which will drive affordability of the fiber based infrastructure over DSL.

Increasingly, operators are also seeing a business case in terms of user acceptability and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), as they begin to roll out FTTH–GPON based networks. Moreover, going forward, prices will fall which will lead to reduction in tariffs.

TTSL to launch services on GSM platform shortly

From http://www.topnews.in Submitted by Darpana Kutty on Tue, 06/02/2009 – 05:07

The telecommunication company of the Tata Group – Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL) is all set to launch services on GSM platform shortly. The TTSL is compelled to provide services on the GSM platform, due to the lack of a “spectrum roadmap for code division multiple access (CDMA) operators and the limited allocation of airwaves”.

The Managing Director of TTSL, Anil Sardana says, “If one can’t grow, one will have to find alternative means to exist. It is the entire policy around allocation of spectrum that caused us to look at other means.”

Sardana explains that spectrum means the airwaves through which the communication signals travel. Spectrum is very important for telecom operators. Sardana reveals, “In the Indian situation, we need to keep the aspect of spectrum availability in mind. The spectrum allocation for CDMA operators is only 800 MHz and no extra spectrum is available beyond what is already allocated to us. Since there is no roadmap, it is from that compulsion that one has to look at alternatives to grow.”

One of the CDMA giants, TTSL, along with Reliance Communications (RCOM), took the first step towards the GSM by applying for dual technology licences in late 2007. The TTSL is set to start its GSM operations shortly, while RCom has already commenced GSM services in India.

The TTSL operates under the brand name “Tata Indicom” in several circles of India. The telephony services of the company include mobile, fixed wireless phones (FWP), public telephone booths and wireline services. The company also provides broadband data network and application services including leased lines, DSL, Wi-Fi, ethernet, managed gateway services and web conferencing services. The company has two unified access (basic + cellular) services licences (UASL) – one for Mumbai Metro and the other for the entire Maharashtra and Goa.

BSNL may award Huawei’s contract to Alcatel-Lucent – ITI combine

18 May 2009, 1534 hrs IST, Joji Thomas Philip, ET Bureau

NEW DELHI: State-owned BSNL plans to award contract for 25 million GSM lines worth $1.5 billion to the French-Indian combine Alcatel-ITI for western India. BSNL has identified this as an alternate solution as the telco cannot award this contract to Chinese equipment major Huawei on security grounds as the West zone shares ‘sensitive boundaries with Pakistan’, a top BSNL executive told ET. The telco had earlier shortlised Huawei for this contract.

This is part of BSNL’s contract for 93 million GSM lines, the largest ever telecoms equipment order globally. Ericsson was short-listed as the lowest bidder for north and east regions of the country while Huawei was selected for west, east and south zones.

As first reported by ET last week, BSNL had got the approval of a security panel consisting of representatives from the Intelligence Bureau, defence ministry and other intelligence agencies including RAW to award telecoms equipment contract to Huawei subject to the condition that the Chinese firm be given orders only in the Southern states of the country. The logic: South Indian states do not share sensitive borders with countries such as Pakistan, China and Bangladesh. Besides, Huawei is already working with BSNL in south India.

Following this, BSNL had opened tenders for three zones – North, East and South Zones. Swedish equipment major Ericsson was awarded the contract for 25 million for the North Zone and 18 million lines for the East Zone while Huawei bagged 25 million lines for the South Zone.

BSNL had shorlisted only Ericsson for the North Zone. While both Ericsson and Huawei were shortlisted in the East Zone, BSNL decided to award the contract to the Swedish company as this region shares boundaries with China and Bangladesh.

A top BSNL executive said that awarding the contract to Alcatel-Lucent, which has manufacturing tie-up with state-owned ITI ‘is the best way out’ as the company was heavily short of network capacity and calling for fresh tenders would further delay the process.

They also pointed out that Alcatel-Lucent was the alternative as it was the only company other than Huawei that had bid for the 25-million lines contract in the West Zone. Besides, BSNL cannot award the West Zone contract to Ericsson since tender conditions also stipulate that one company cannot be awarded more than two zones. (The Swedish company has already been selected to the North and East regions).

At the same time, BSNL is also concerned that Nokia Siemens Networks whose bid for the North Zone was disqualiifed, may approach the courts if it were to award the contract to Alcatel-Lucent. BSNL is also looking at imposing certain conditions before it awards the contract to Alcatel-Lucent. First, it must match the prices offered by Ericsson and Huawei in the other zones. BSNL will also insist that Alcaltel-Lucent manufacture a significant part of these 25 million lines with loss making PSU – Indian Telecom Industries.

Alcatel-Lucent already has a tie-up with ITI to use the latter’s production facilities in Rae Bareily and Mankapur for manufacturing GSM base stations, mobile switching controllers and broadband (digital subscriber link-DSL) equipment. As reported by ET recently, Alcatel-Lucent executives had said that the French-American combine is open to buying out a part of ITI, if the government were to enforce the ‘offset clause’ for all telecom tenders issued by BSNL and MTNL, the two main clients of ITI, who contribute over 80% to its revenue.

Under the offset policy, 30% of all telecom contracts (for hardware and equipment) awarded by BSNL and MTNL should be sourced and manufactured by ITI. Of late, facing pressure from MTNL and BSNL, Department of Telecom has not enforced this clause, as ITI did not meet delivery schedules for previous contracts.

So BSNL’s tender for 93 million lines for mobile expansion, the world’s largest GSM equipment contract, did not automatically give 30% to ITI. For the past several years, the government has been exploring various options to revive the ailing 12,750-employee-strong ITI, which has accumulated losses of Rs 2,000-crore in 2007-08.

A Guide to India’s Telecom Market

April 19, 2009 Catherine Haslam on http://www.lightreading.com/

In March 2008, Light Reading published A Guide to India’s Telecom Operators. It proved to be one of the most popular articles on the site that year.

Now, little more than 12 months later, the Indian market has moved on considerably. Last year’s report noted that, at the end of 2007, the country’s mobile operators had a total of 233.6 million connections mong them. A year later, as 2008 ended, India’s mobile service providers boasted nearly 347 million connections, a year-on-year increase of nearly 50 percent. (See IndiaWatch: Mobile Nears 347M Subs.)

And there’s plenty of wireless growth still to come: In the first two months of 2009 alone, the mobile operators activated more than 28 million additional connections. (See India Adds 13M Subs in February and India Adds 15M Mobile Subs in January.) According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) , the total number of telecommunications services connections reached nearly 414 million at the end February 2009, of which more than 90 percent were wireless.

In stark contrast to the mind-boggling growth experienced in the mobile sector, fixed voice connections have suffered a gentle decline in recent years: At the end of February 2009, India, a country of nearly 1.2 billion inhabitants, had just 37.73 million fixed-line connections. India’s fixed-line sector is not dead, though: There’s potential growth in that market, too, as well as in the wireless world, though the big numbers and the immediate impact will continue to come in the mobile sector.

There are two obvious ways for the service providers to expand. The first is, quite simply, to connect more people. Teledensity is rising steadily but had only reached 35.65 percent at the end of February 2009, leaving significant potential for additional market expansion.

The majority of growth will now come from outside the metro circles and in the smaller cities, towns, and rural villages as teledensity in the major urban centers has reached 82 percent. It’s worth noting that 70 percent of the Indian population lives in rural areas, and, equally importantly, 64 percent of the nation’s expenditure and 56 percent of its income comes from these villages – yet India’s rural teledensity currently stands at less than 13 percent.

It’s the potential for rural area growth that drew five new players into the market in 2008, and it’s that same potential that prompted a number of international players, including Telenor ASA (Nasdaq: TELN) and Etisalat , to take major stakes in each of the five (see the Wireless Service Providers section for further details). This trend towards international ownership is now well embedded and is likely to become more prominent when India’s 3G spectrum auctions finally take place, which should be later this year.

The second growth driver is new services, such as broadband, IPTV, 3G mobile, and broadband wireless access (BWA), particularly using WiMax technology. Broadband connectivity is still very low, but state-owned operators Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) , along with private carriers such as Bharti Airtel Ltd. (Mumbai: BHARTIARTL), are slowly increasing their DSL customer bases in urban centers (See the Fixed-Line Service Providers section for more details). Cable companies, such as Hathway Cable & Datacom Pvt. Ltd. and Sify Ltd. (Nasdaq: SIFY), are also developing broadband businesses, while Reliance Communications Ltd. has concentrated on building out WiMax capabilities to complement its high-speed Ethernet access rollout.

IPTV has struggled to gain traction as a popular service since its initial hype, but is now building, albeit slowly, with a number of service providers still planning to launch their services. With the incredible amount of content created by the Bollywood movie industry, and other local content developers, the potential flexibility offered by IPTV services could work well in the Indian environment, according to Jai Maroo, an industry executive interviewed by Light Reading TV (see below).

It’s not all growth and success in the Indian telecom market, though. Plans to promote rural connectivity have fallen short after getting bogged down in bureaucracy, while the Department of Telecommunications ‘s inability to agree on terms for the 3G and BWA spectrum auctions with other government departments has delayed deployment of mobile broadband solutions, leaving operators frustrated. They are also limited by a lack of spectrum, which, despite the size of the market, is in short supply: Indian operators have received far less than the world average of around 25 MHz apiece.

With so many developments going on, and with so many other markets around the world relatively stagnant in terms of subscriber growth, there’s never been a more important time to understand the Indian telecom sector, its service provider players, and its structure. And that’s what this report provides.

As well as a visual guide to the country’s service areas, known as “circles,” this report provides a roll call of the fixed-line and mobile operators, an explanation of the licensing environment, an overview of the many companies involved in the provision of mobile tower sites as India embraces passive infrastructure sharing on a massive scale, and an overview of the country’s approach to increasing rural teledensity.