Optical and digital solutions company Sterlite Technologies (STL) is not looking to tap into the 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) equipment space anytime soon as its focus remains on the optical fibre cable business, the company’s managing director Ankit Agarwal told FE in an interaction.
Agarwal’s comments come at a time when STL’s peers such as HFCL have announced plans to manufacture 5G FWA consumer premise equipment (CPE) in order to tap the $9 billion per year FWA market opportunity.
“We are very focused on the fibre optics side. We have decided to do a few things but do it well,” Agarwal said, adding that even with fixed wireless access the demand for fiber will continue to be strong.
This is because FWA is essentially a stop gap solution because of the last mile access particularly to reach the homes. As the number of FWA access points will increase, there will be a need for fibre to connect and for backhaul to the FWA as well. So, still the premise is that the cities will need a lot of fiber, Agarwal explained.
At the recently concluded India Mobile Congress, STL launched 160-micron fibre, the world’s slimmest fibre and cable technology. Cable made with 160-micron fibre can pack three times more capacity than traditional 250-micron fibre in the duct and also reduces the fibre deployment time significantly, the company said.
“With the 5G rollouts you need 80-90% of the towers to be fiberised. For that you need a lot more capacity and density of fiber. Here, both the quality and diameter of fiber also becomes very important,” Agarwal said, adding that laying ducts account for 60% of the entire fibre deployment cost, and therefore making duct space becomes important.
STL will manufacture the newly launched fibre at its facility in Aurangabad. The company has witnessed interest from telecom operators, which will deploy the fibre as a field trial over coming weeks.
“Typically, it could take around 1-2 years for this kind of technology to become mainstream,” Agarwal added.
The company is also looking to leverage a strong revenue opportunity from the Rs 1.39 trillion BharatNet phase 3 project.
“It is such a large project that it will require at least six to seven large players to participate. It is very positive for the company,” Agarwal said.
According to STL, in a large-scale project like BharatNet, where the need is to deploy 20 million fibre km cable by 2025, its latest 160-micron fibre instead of the standard 250-micron fibre can potentially reduce the deployment time by 15% as well as reduce the plastic footprint.