With the competition creeping in, BSNL, the leader in optical transmission deployment in the country, has been trying to upgrade its network to cope up with the emerging demand of voice and data in the country due to decrease in cost of STD and ISD services in the country. At present, the company has an overall capacity of 326,271 rkm (as on 31 March 2002) and has been buying large amount of SDH equipment. However, it is expected that the focus will now be more on enhancing the delivery network and opting for more of STM-1 and STM-4 equipment. Even MTNL has upgraded its network to carry any increase in traffic and it seems there would be only a small incremental value in this fiscal.

Tata, the integrated telecom player in the country is planning big as the company has to deploy backbone both on the basic services and DLD fronts. Tata Teleservices is planning to spend around Rs 80 crore in a three-year timeframe in all the four new circles. It seems that for all the circles, Marconi was awarded the contract but the company was unable to fulfill its promise and so the Delhi contract was awarded to Fibcom. Another Tata Group company, VSNL is implementing the domestic long distance project for Tata and the company is planning to deploy a mix of SDH and DWDM. Plans are to deploy around 5,000 km of OFC in this fiscal and around 7,000 km of OFC in the next fiscal.

Reliance is really planning big and plans are to launch broadband network in 2,000 odds town and cities by deploying 60,000 km of OFC in the country. Regarding optical transmission, the company is planning for DWDM in the core and SDH in the delivery and distribution network. The company is thinking of deploying 64 channel STM-64 for the core backbone and SDH equipment like STM-1, STM-4, and STM-16 on the delivery and distribution network. The company has opted Nortel for the core network and Fibcom for the delivery network.

Bharti, the first company to launch DLD service in the country has deployed around 18,000 km of OFC in the country and plans are to deploy another 6,000 km in years to come. Initially for DLD, Bharti was planning to deploy DWDM technology but seeing the demand projections the company opted for SDH. The company has signed a long-term contract with Nortel whereby the company has been supplying the equipment depending upon the demand. On the basic services front, the company opted for Siemens for Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, and SDH order for Delhi and Haryana was awarded to Alcatel.

In the utility sector, GAIL has been very active and the company has commissioned the second phase of the project. The company, in the first phase, is planning to deploy around 2,700 km of which 700 km is underground and the rest is overhead. In the second phase, the company is planning to deploy another 12,000 km. Railtel, another utility company is planning to deploy around 25,000 km of OFC connecting around 2,500 cities by March 2003. The company has deployed around 12,000 km of OFC. The company is planning to deploy STM-1 and STM-4 for the delivery network and STM-16 for the backbone network.