"Fiber is a cost-effective and secure communication medium"

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Why should fiber be the preferred choice for service providers?

The choice between optical fiber and electrical (or copper) transmission for a particular system is made based on a number of trade-offs. Optical fiber is generally chosen for systems requiring higher bandwidth or spanning longer distances than copper cabling can accommodate. The main benefits of fiber are its exceptionally low loss, allowing long distances between amplifiers or repeaters (lower power consumption), and its inherently high data carrying capacity (several Gigabytes) so that thousands of copper links would be required to replace a single high bandwidth fiber cable. Another benefit of fiber is that even when run alongside each other for long distances, fiber cables experience effectively no crosstalk, in contrast to copper transmission lines. Fiber cables are immune to EMI/RFI and lightning damages, and can be installed alongside utility lines, power lines, and railroad tracks. Non metallic all-dielectric cables are also ideal for areas of high lightning-strike incidence.

Apart from the technological benefits, fiber is a cost effective and secure communication medium too. Fiber cables are of light weight, smaller diameter, flexible and are easy to install and maintain in backhaul, access and premise networks. Overall, fiber offers a cost effective system with low per-channel cost that offers longer life expectancy than copper/coaxial cables and are resistant to radiation, corrosion, temperature variations and harsh environments.

Transmission in the networks is becoming more and more digital and the need for broadband access has resulted in optical fiber increasingly becoming the transmission medium of choice with inherent capacity to transmit all forms of communication.

With network traffic sure to grow in the future, service providers will need to make significant investments in laying of optic fiber network which offers faster connection with ultra high speed than wireless. The advent of 3G, LTE and FTTH will make it more important for service providers to roll out optic fiber based transmission networks, which have high bandwidth capabilities necessary to support these technologies.

3G and BWA services will be able to provide the benefit of voice, broadband connectivity, and high speed data downloading and computing to the common man on their mobile devices. This will also pave way for deployment of optical transmission platforms and infrastructure to support the roll out of 3G and FTTH networks which provide greater bandwidth efficiency and decrease in operating costs as data traffic grows exponentially and revenues per bit decline. The demand for high speed and bandwidth hungry applications will make optical fiber based transmission a necessity.

If the advantages are a plenty, why are service providers still looking at copper, despite it being an exhaustive material?

Service providers clearly understand the need for choosing the transmission medium. In short distance (between terminals and hosts limited to a few meters) and relatively low bandwidth applications, copper transmission is often preferred because of its:

Lower cost of transmitters and receivers

Ease of operating transducers in linear mode.

It is not true that service providers are still looking at copper over fiber. A recent study of the Indian telecom cable market is testimony to the fact that copper cables constitute upto 9.4% of the market as against 82.5% of optical fiber.

Brief us about your latest tie-ups and offerings.

As discussed so far, 3M recognizes that fiber medium with the enormous benefits that it offers, will continue to grow. Service providers world-wide will continue to make significant investments in fiber networks. In line with this technological evolution, 3M has launched several innovative passive products for cable connectivity, cable management and cable protection. We continue to work closely with all the leading OEMs and service providers in developing solutions to address their emerging needs and existing pain points. These solutions are available to the global market depending on the customer needs and can be customized quickly with the capability of our laboratories, factories and strong sales and technical resources that are present in all geographies.

We recently launched 3M One Pass Fiber Pathway, which enables fast installation of FTTP networks for multi-dwelling units (MDUs). This is a horizontal cable pathway and drop cable solution, and is compatible with a variety of hallway wall surfaces. The low profile design is less obtrusive than existing horizontal cable pathway solutions and because it's flexible, the pathway conforms well to curved walls often found in older MDUs. Fewer parts and a continuous, seamless application process make installation of the 3M One Pass Fiber Pathway quick, reducing installation time and labor costs compared to traditional cable pathway and drop cable solutions.

With 3G coming into the forefront, how will the landscape of the telecom industry in India change?

In simple terms, 3G services combine high speed mobile access with Internet Protocol (IP) based services. Rather, whole new ways to communicate, access information, conduct business, learn and be entertained, liberated from slow, cumbersome equipment and immovable points of access. It will enhance and extend mobility in many areas of our lives. 3G digital-phone networks will have a nominal maximum data rate of 2 Mb/s, which can handle streaming video, two-way voice over IP, and Internet content with high quality graphics.

There is a mix of excitement and concern as service providers will need to make significant investments in building the 3G infrastructure. The associated high spectrum-license costs, network deployment costs, handset subsidies to subscribers, etc, will impact the pricing structure and profitability of operators. However, operators will need to migrate to 3G services because of lack of spectrum in the current 2G platform. They will need to find ways to give incentives and shift their high ARPU customers to 3G services and start building a subscriber base. As per analysts, operators will see break even in six-eight years given the kind of capital investments that are required to be made. This could be manageable for operators like Bharti, Vodafone, Idea, Reliance who have deep pockets while the smaller players may loose bandwidth to sustain. This could open doors for consolidation.

As a technology, 3G will depend heavily on the Fiber backhaul between base stations. Base stations will need to be closer to each other and the Remote Radio Unit (RRU) will move from the base station to the tower. It is here that (Fiber to the Antenna (FTTA) comes into play and 3M has various solutions to offer here. We are continuing to work on some innovative solutions that will maximize performance and minimize costs which will be launched shortly.

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