OFC

&

The Indian Telecom Market

OFC & The Indian Telecom Market

© Sandipan Sen

OFC & The Indian Telecom Market

Over the last few years, India is at the cusp of its next phase of enviable growth, driven by an economy that has been growing at over 9% even in the face of the global slowdown.

Indian telecom sector remained as the silver lining in the dark clouds of global economic recession and crowned as the second largest telecom market globally.

The success of the Indian telecommunications sector has become the cynosure of the world and has made the country a trulyattractive investment destination.

The success of the Telecom sector has largely been driven by wireless services, with operators reporting total additions of approximately 15 million subscribers every month.

The overall teledensity has crossed 43.5 percent, with urban areas approaching 100 % teledensity.

Service providers are focusing in increasing penetration in urban circles, and looking to continue growth by tapping the large rural Indian markets. In doing so, policy makers, private players and all the stakeholders in the ecosystem have successfully came together to ensure that the industry continues to remain a shining star for India.

The potential for the sector remains large especially in non-urban areas where wireline and internet services are yet to make significant in-roads and thus the telecom cable segment is at the point of inflexion.

The government of India has set targets of 20 Million for broadband for 2010, from the current figures of 7.22 Million (September, 2009), with a large population yet to have access to telecommunication market.

India has become the world's third largest domestic OFC market.

To meet the growing traffic demands OFC is becoming the noticeable preference to Major Indian Of Cos in rolling out new network and in upgrading the existing ones due to inherent capacity to transmit all forms of communication

with virtually limitless bandwidth transfer capacity.

Government initiative in rolling out FTTH across the country to provide high speed broadband, Dual Play & triple play services has fueled the demand for OFC.

Government's ambitious plan to bring the country's 12 lakh villages into the high speed

© Sandipan Sen

OFC & The Indian Telecom Market

internet fold has resulted in an explosive growth of OFC business.

Though, the present usage of OFC is concentrated only in the long distance and metro networks however several Public Private Partnership initiatives like rolling out 15000 route km by of OFC by Indian Railways and lying the nationwide OFC network exclusively for Defense & Navy, has accelerated the demand of OFC in a sizeable way!

Various service sectors like Railways, Gas & Power utilities, Cable TV and Realty developers are evaluating the techno-commercial benefits of this technology which on successful implementation will augment the demand for

OFC and bring significant investment flow towards lying the optic fiber.

A huge demand has been envisaged after the 3G rollout and expected to have a steady double digit growth in the coming years.

The inadequacy of telecom infrastructure, fiber and microwave backhaul capacity has remained the major bottleneck to the Of Cos. However, Assets sharing within Of Cos, Service Bundling and robust technology reinforcement can open the golden gates.

The last 5 years have been transformational for Indian Telecom Industry, the next few years look even more exciting.

© Sandipan Sen