Context
Recently, India is preparing to auction off about 72 GHz of airwaves to roll out 5G services in the country.
What is fiberisation?
- The process of connecting radio towers with each other via optical fibre cables is called fiberisation.
- It helps provide full utilisation of network capacity, and carry large amounts of data once 5G services are rolled out.
- It will also aid in providing additional bandwidth and stronger backhaul support.
- The backhaul is a component of the larger transport that is responsible for carrying data across the network.
- It represents the part of the network that connects the core of the network to the edge. As a result, fibre backhaul remains an important part of transport across all telecoms.
- Fibre-based media, commonly called optical media, provides almost infinite bandwidth and coverage, low latency and high insulation from interference.
- With 5G, it will also be necessary to increase the density of mobile towers to provide better coverage to consumers and businesses.
- This calls for increased requirements for fibre deployment.
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Tower Fiberization in India
- To transition into 5G, India needs at least 16 times more fibre.
- In India, currently only 33% of the towers are fiberised, compared to the 65%-70% in South Korea and 80%-90% in the U.S., Japan and China, according to a 2021 report by India Infrastructure Research.
- The fibre kilometre (fkm) per capita in India is lower than other key markets.
- Ideally, a country needs 1.3 km of fibre per capita to ensure good fiberisation.
- India’s fkm is just .09 compared to 1.35 in Japan, 1.34 in the U.S. and 1.3 in China.
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Fiber Optics & Optical Fibers
- A technology that uses glass (or plastic) threads (fibers) to transmit data.
- A fiber optic cable consists of a bundle of glass threads, each of which is capable of transmitting messages modulated onto light waves.
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Assessing pros & cons of fiber optics
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Benefits
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Disadvantages
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- Fiber provides more bandwidth and has standardized performance up to 10 Gbps and beyond
- very little signal loss occurs during transmission and data can move to greater distances
- less susceptible to noise and electromagnetic interference than copper wire
- completely immune to many environmental factors that affect copper cable
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- Cables are expensive to install
- More fragile than wire due to limited physical arc of the cable (cannot bend much)
- Difficult to splice
- Loss of light in fiber due to scattering
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