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 24x7 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.