Future-ready fibre must to anchor India’s long-term connectivity

The government in India is in overdrive to ensure that the country attains developed-nation status by 2047. This 22-year journey demands strong, future-proof connectivity that extends well beyond the target year. Achieving the vision of Viksit Bharat will require, among other critical factors, networks that can endure the next two decades and more, without needing replacement due to poor-quality fibre, scalability constraints, reliability issues, or technological obsolescence.

India must therefore prioritise not only what works today, but what will continue to serve a developed nation for decades. Our connectivity infrastructure must be built to meet the country’s population-scale requirements for capacity, performance, scalability, reliability, and longevity.

India’s Existing Connectivity Pathways

In today’s world, there are three principal pathways to achieving population-scale digital connectivity: wireless networks, satellite systems, and optical fibre. Wireless connectivity refers largely to the last-mile networks that people encounter daily through 3G, 4G, and 5G technologies. These networks enable mobile usage, broadband access, and enterprise communications, and they evolve rapidly as new standards emerge, with 6G now on the horizon.

The pace of these generational shifts means that operators must invest repeatedly, every five to seven years, to upgrade their infrastructure to accommodate new capabilities. Wireless systems also extend to long-haul technologies such as WiMAX and point-to-point radio links. Still, these too remain bound by the inherent limits of available spectrum and physical constraints.

It is clear that wireless connectivity alone cannot deliver the depth, resilience, and nationwide reach needed for India’s development ambitions, particularly when the goal is to achieve digital antodaya—connectivity for the last person in the remotest village. Wireless networks heavily depend on backhaul connectivity that needs to carry an enormous amount of data, which is restricted by the limitations of Physics. Spectrum is finite, and only a limited amount of information can be transmitted over the air.

Limits of Wireless and Satellite Links

Wireless systems are expensive on a per-gigabyte basis, whether deployed for long-distance data transport or for connecting individual homes. Their vulnerability to weather disruptions further adds to the challenge. Given India’s heavy monsoons, signal attenuation is a common issue that frequently undermines performance.

This also means that wireless connectivity is best positioned not as the backbone of national infrastructure, but as an access layer that sits on top of a much stronger and more resilient underlying system.

Satellite technologies present a different set of strengths and limitations. Satellites have the advantage of delivering connectivity across vast and sparsely populated regions without requiring extensive terrestrial infrastructure. Constellations of low-earth-orbit satellites can reach mountains, deserts, islands, and disaster-affected zones where laying fibre is difficult or uneconomical.

Overall, satellite networks can aggregate demand across broad geographies and can therefore operate with reasonable economies of scale. This makes them valuable for remote-area connectivity and emergency response.

However, satellite systems face significant technological and economic challenges. Low-earth-orbit satellites experience continuous atmospheric drag, which shortens their operational life and requires frequent replacement. Launching replacement satellites is expensive and environmentally harmful, as each rocket launch contributes to the degradation of the ozone layer.

Additionally, end-user costs for satellite internet remain significantly higher than those for terrestrial alternatives. And because satellites transmit data wirelessly, they continue to face the same physical limitations and weather-related disruptions that affect terrestrial wireless networks. These constraints make satellite connectivity a useful supplementary solution, but not a viable backbone for a Viksit Bharat.

Optical fibre, by contrast, may appear more capital-intensive in the short term, with costs associated with trenching, ducting, and cable-laying often perceived as high when compared with setting up mobile towers or installing satellite equipment. Yet fibre is unquestionably the most reliable and cost-effective option when assessed through a long-term national development lens.

Why Fibre Must Anchor India’s Network

This long-term view becomes even clearer when comparing fibre with wireless and satellite options. Unlike those technologies, fibre is immune to spectrum scarcity and weather fluctuations.

Properly laid fibre can operate for decades, with only the terminal equipment at either end of the line requiring upgrades as technology evolves. While wireless networks must be replaced with each new generation and satellites must be replenished regularly, fibre networks remain relevant and usable for 20 to 30 years or more.

The economics of fibre also strengthen over time. The cost per gigabyte of transmission drops dramatically as data traffic increases, making fibre the most efficient choice for long-haul, mid-haul, and last-mile connectivity. Beyond economics, optical fibre is indispensable for mission-critical applications such as robotic surgeries, defence communications, stock-exchange transactions, and national emergency systems—contexts in which even microseconds of delay can have serious consequences.

Fibre is also essential for tower fiberisation, without which 5G and future 6G networks cannot deliver the high-speed, high-capacity performance that policymakers and businesses expect.

International experience reinforces these conclusions. The United States, under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) programme, has committed around USD 42 billion to broadband expansion, with a clear emphasis on fibre as the only medium that can guarantee future-proof performance. Many leading digital economies in Europe and East Asia are equally firm in placing fibre at the core of their long-term connectivity plans.

India will ultimately require a mix of technologies to meet the diverse needs of its 1.4 billion citizens. Wireless and satellite networks will continue to serve important roles in mobility, remote area coverage, and specialised applications. However, as demonstrated by national programmes such as BharatNet, fibre must remain the foundation of India’s connectivity architecture. The success of this national effort depends on resisting short-term fixes—commonly known as jugaad—and committing instead to infrastructure that will last for generations.

Fibre’s unmatched scale, resilience, and longevity make it crucial not only for everyday digital services such as education, telemedicine, and e-governance, but also for the broader digital economy that India aspires to build. The future of mobility, including autonomous vehicles, connected transport networks, precision agriculture, smart logistics, industrial automation, and public safety systems, will all depend on ultra-low-latency, high-reliability connectivity. Fibre is the only technology that can consistently support these demands at scale.

While complementary technologies will continue to evolve and play their part, the foundation of a Viksit Bharat by 2047—and well beyond—rests squarely on a strong, future-ready, fibre-based digital backbone.

Dr Jaijit Bhattacharya is the President of the Centre for Digital Economy Policy (C-DEP).