To finetune its enterprise offerings, state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) is looking at Fibre-To-The Home (FTTH) service. It plans to launch these services across 117 major commercial cities in India.

It has established a high-count fibre network in more than 400 cities. This will be expanded into districts and sub-districts as the demand for high-speed broadband over fibre grows. BSNL plans to expand its IPTV services on a pan-India basis with enhanced video-on-demand and interactive video services.

It expects a revenue of Rs 1,560 crore from its FTTH service by 2012-2013.

Experts, say the FTTH network is capex intensive and is a solution towards enabling last mile connectivity in the country. However, in a country like India, geographical challenges are a major hindrance to laying of FTTH network.

The soft launch of BSNL?s FTTH network was done early this year in Jaipur, Rajasthan.

?As part of this expansion plan, we will invest in a building a financially remunerative next generation end-to-end national IP network of the future to handle ever increasing internet and data traffic,? said a source on the condition of anonymity.

The company?s enterprise offerings consist of three segments – managed services, broadband and FTTH. In India, so far FTTH has been underplayed by the government and network operators as they have been concerned primarily with data services, but not voice and video services. It is primarily a broadband telecommunications system based on fiber-optic cables and associated optical electronics that enables delivery services like IPTV, high definition TV, interactive television, video-on-demand, personal video recorder, smart appliances and electronic homes.

In India, the rollout of wireless technologies like 3G and Wimax will fuel the demand for optical fiber cable, which is a critical part of the infrastructure for these technologies.

BSNL has drawn up plans to increase its broadband subscriber base by offering connections through various technology products including copperline loop (ADSL2), Wi-Max, CDMA Evdo datacards, 3G data cards and optical fibre access. Currently its broadband subscriber base stands at 5 million and within next three years, it is planning to add 36 million broadband subscribers.