As the penetration of fiber-based home broadband is increasing in the country, the government has asked the telecom service providers as well as internet service providers (ISPs) to resolve issues related to the home broadband technology within three months, according to people aware of the matter.
The issue largely pertains to compatibility between devices installed at the consumer premises (known as Optical Network Terminal or ONT) and ISP or a telecom equipment (known as Optical Line Terminal or OLT). The use of equipments from multi-vendors by the telecom service providers is leading to interoperability issues between the devices, thereby affecting the quality of services resulting in more downtimes, fall in speeds, etc, officials said.
In a recent meeting with telcos and ISPs, the Telecommunication Engineering Center (TEC) under the department of telcommunications (DoT) have asked them to carry out certain tests to check for interoperability between the consumer premise equipment and their own equipment, and resolve the issues thereof. The meeting was attended by officials from Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL), MTNL, Den Broadband, Hathway, YOU Broadband, among others. Several network solution providers were also part of the meeting.
“Several complains on the lack of interoperability between ONT and OLT have been flagged by FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) customers. TEC has formed an expert group to prepare a test schedule with the aim to address the challenges in making OLT-ONT interoperable and this group carried out a detailed study and analysis of international standards and test plans,” said RR Mittar, advisor and head TEC, according to minutes of the meeting document.
Currently, there are about 35 million subscribers using fiber-broadband services, with Jio being the largest player with about 10 million connections followed by Bharti Airtel at 6.5 million subscribers, according to data by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
According to an industry expert, these issues between the communication of two or multiple devices arise when some of the equipment makers do not follow the set standards by TEC or other designated authority. Not following set of standards means that they either miss out certain required configurations or add unnecessary configurations to the equipments. Similarly, there could be software compatibility issues as well.
At present, there are 65 such OLT/ONT device makers,who have been certified by TEC for their different models as per its standards.
During the meeting, an Airtel official said the company will coordinate with the original equipment makers to resolve such issues in the home broadband technology. A BSNL executive also talked about problems in FTTH services provided under BharatNet due to device compatibility issues and urged TEC to circulate a single point of contact list for such device makers in case of any interoperability issues.
Some of the executives also raised issues about some players providing poor quality equipments and falsely claiming that they are TEC certified.
In a bid to strenghten the quality of services norms in the home broadband space, TEC is expected to soon make prior testing of equipments for interoperability a mandatory requirement for which relevant certifications will be issued, officials said.