The Hindu Business Line : Fibre on power

Over the last few years, a few electricity boards, including those of AP and Karnataka, have strung up their existing networks with optic fibre cables.

Vino John

Charging up Internet access.

M. Ramesh

In less than a month, Chennai-based BGR Energy will complete a Rs 20-crore project for the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB), for laying optic fibre cables along the board’s existing lines, over a length of 400 circuit kilo metres, doubling TNEB’s OFC network.

According to V Elango, Chief Engineer (Protection and Communications), TNEB, the OFC network will essentially be used for its own internal communication, for example, for voice and data transmission and video conferencing.

But, notes Elango, apart from saving around Rs 2 crore of charges to BSNL, the network will arm TNEB with a huge revenue potential in selling broadband.

Over the last few years, a few electricity boards, including those of AP and Karnataka, have strung up their existing networks with optic fibre cables.

This is but the very tip of the iceberg. If and when the other electricity boards start doing this, it will go a long way (literally) in bringing rural India onto the information highway.

The Power Grid Corporation of India, Gas Authority of India and Indian Railways have all put OFC along their existing networks, but the networks of these entities are miniscule compared to the potential the power transmission lines offer.

Today, PGCIL has an OFC network of 50,000 circuit km. GAIL has 13,000 ckm. The Railways has around 32,000 ckm and proposes to add 10,000 ckm.

In the private sector, Reliance has 60,000 ckm and Bharti has about 74,000 ckm. The total OFC network in the country is somewhere between 7 lakh and 10 lakh ckm.

Comparatively, the TNEB alone has 1.5 lakh ckm of high voltage and extra high voltage lines and another 5.4 lakh ckm of low voltage lines.

Big broadband push

The biggest hurdle in laying an OFC network is finding the right of way. Electricity boards do not have this problem — they have their own power line networks along which they could lay the OFC.

As most of the power lines reach deep into interior India, into small and tiny villages, experts believe that this could be an answer to taking broadband pan-India.

Once the backbone is in place, operators would come up to offer services over the backbone.

“Unless optic fibre cable networks are laid on a large scale, it will be difficult to provide high-speed Internet access. India is a vast country and geographically it is not very easy to deploy the access network to support higher bandwidth with affordable prices,” says the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in a discussion paper released in January.

The paper notes that “with the opening of access network to wireless access technologies such as 3G, WiMAX, etc, it is anticipated that wireless broadband will provide wider coverage but not very high speed as (is) possible with optic fibre networks.”

That the need for broadband will grow is not in question.

Today, there are only 3 million broadband subscribers in India — an embarrassing figure in the context of TRAI’s target of 9 million subscribers by 2007 and 20 million by 2010.

Further, 96 per cent of the subscribers use connection speeds of 256 kbps, around 3 per cent use 512 kbps, and only around 1 per cent use 2 mpbs.

Contrast this with, say, Hong Kong, where 10 mbps is the norm, and you will see how much India needs to catch up.

The reason for preference for low speeds is, obviously, the cost.

A 256 kbps connection typically costs Rs 250 a month whereas a 2 mbps costs Rs 3,300.

But as availability of bandwidth rises, the costs will fall, leading to an increased subscriber base, which, in turn, will feed a further fall in costs.

Thus, with both growth in subscribers and demand for higher speeds, India is going to be bandwidth hungry. The electricity boards are uniquely positioned to cash in on this business.

“I see this happening. It is just inevitable,” says a senior official of BGR Energy.

mramesh@thehindu.co.in

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