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.

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