Technology Options
Service providers are using OFC in the backbone and PIJF on the access front.
But with people opting for wireless technologies on the access, OFC is still the
preferred choice for the majority of new basic service providers in the country.
n Polyethylene
Insulated Jelly-filled (PIJF) Cable: PIJF is an assembly of a number of pairs of
copper wires. The gap between the pairs of wires is filled with petroleum jelly
to reduce noise and transmission losses. Each line has two wires–one for
incoming and the other for outgoing.
There are two types of PIJF cables in use–solid PIJF cable and foamed PIJF
cable. In case of the solid PIJF cable, the conductor is insulated with solid
polyethylene. This type of cable is presently used in the DoT network. In case
of foamed PIJF cable, the conductor insulation is foamed to form a cellular
cross-section, with a suitable foaming agent.
Telecom |
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Rank | Company | Turnover (2001-02) (in Rs Cr) |
Turnover (2000-01) (in Rs Cr) |
1 | Sterlite Optical Technologies | 954.89 | 763.79 |
2 | Finolex Cables | 374.84 | 315.8 |
3 | Vindhya Telelinks | 328.89 | 368 |
4 | Aksh | 231.7 | 142.54 |
5 | Birla Ericsson Optical | 215.95 | 194.87 |
6 | Usha Beltron | 203 | 216 |
7 | RPG Cables | 170 | 264 |
8 | Paramount Cables | 136 | 163.01 |
9 | Tamil Nadu Telecommunications | 128.1 | 113 |
10 | Bhagyanagar Metals | 94 | 127 |
11 | Telephone Cables Ltd | 90 | 79.5 |
12 | Delton Cables | 70.47 | 83.45 |
13 | Surana Telecom |
69.39 | 65.08 |
14 | Concepta Cables |
66 | 97 |
15 | Gujarat Telephone Cables | 53 | 184 |
16 | Sudarshan Telecom |
46.82 | 9.74 |
17 | Others | 900 | 944 |
 | Total | 4,133.05 | 4,130.78 |
V&D |
n Optical Fiber
Cables (OFC): OFC offers almost unlimited bandwidth and unique advantages over
all previously developed transmission media. OFCs are no longer dominant only in
the transport network or feeder line but have penetrated to a large extent in
the subscriber loop as well. With fiber, one can transmit narrowband, wideband
and broadband communication services to the end-subscriber through POTS, ISDN
phone, video phone, and video-conferencing. Most of the private service
providers are focussing more to provide fiber to the building.
Buying Tips
n Usage Pattern:
Before buying OFC one should look where it is to be deployed–access or
longhaul. If it is deployed for access purpose than one has to opt for a lower
count fiber. For longhaul purposes like connecting two cities one has to opt for
a higher count fiber as the traffic capacity is on a higher side. Even on the
access front, depending upon residential and commercial users the fiber count
increases or decreases accordingly.
One also has to take into consideration how the cable is to be laid. If it is
to be hanged in the ground than one has to opt for a lighter cable.
n Pricing: The
key buying parameter in government (BSNL, MTNL, and Indian Railways) tenders is
the price as long as the optical fiber cables meet the required specifications.
On the other hand, the private operator, which contributes a small portion of
the overall OFC sales in the country, pays more stress on the quality of fiber.
While buying optical fiber cables, carriers and enterprise customers should
focus more on optical parameters, as most of the problems are due to impurity of
glass and pricing should not be the only criteria.
n Dispersion
Slope: Different fiber manufacturers have different dispersion slopes, which is
proprietary. Different OFC manufacturers in the country use different standards,
which is just a marketing issue. Lower the dispersion slope, the better it is.
n End-to-End
Attenuation: The reduction in signal strength is measured as attenuation and the
unit is decibel (dB). The light passing through fiber will not disperse if the
fiber cladding is uniform throughout the length of the fiber. So attenuation
loss can be minimized if there is uniformity. The permissible limit for 1,310 nm
is 0.38 dB/km while for 1,550 nm it is 0.22 dB/km.
If the attenuation level decreases, it is good, but if it increases then one
has to increase the number of repeaters, which will result in an increase in
transmission cost. In majority of fibers, the attenuation loss varies from 0.19
dB/km to 0.33 dB/km and there is an increase of 0.01 dB/km once the fiber is
transformed into OFC.
n Attenuation
Under Stressful Condition: Under this condition, OFC is put under stress and the
cable is tied on either side, and 2.7 Newton weight is applied on both the
sides. The maximum attenuation variation should be 0.4 to 0.5 percent. Once OFC
is relaxed, it comes back to the normal position. Under pressure, the cable
should not break. This is used mainly for duct and buried type of OFC.
The buyer should also look at other mechanical and optical properties like
mode field concentricity (shows how uniform an OFC is), cut-off wavelength,
splice loss, and fiber loss per km (dependent on the transmission equipment).
n Polarized Mode
Dispersion: This tests the optical characteristics of OFC in polarized mode
whereby one can test how much light goes out and how much light remains inside
the fiber.
n Chromatic
Dispersion: It depicts the number of wavelength that is attenuated and the
strength of the signal.
Market Information
The demand of optical fiber cable in the country is going to decrease as
majority of service providers has already deployed a large portion of the
network. It seems OFC manufacturers are now focussing more on VSNL as it is
deploying its NLD backbone infrastructure. With private basic service providers
focussing more on WLL (M) for residential users, the demand for PIJF
(polyethylene insulated jelly filled) cable has also reduced. It seems even BSNL
is planning to focus more on wireless technologies this will further reduce the
demand of PIJF cable in the country. With public utilities companies like GAIL
and Indian Railways deploying telecom backbone there will be additional
requirement of OFC in the country.
n The JFTC
Market: As mentioned earlier, the top lines and bottom lines of almost all the
JFTC cable manufacturers were affected in 2001-02. While the top lines suffered
because a number of new manufacturers sprung up last year, the bottom line
suffered because there was at least 15 percent drop in prices due to fierce
competition. As many as 30 new companies, mostly power cable manufacturers and
copper scrap dealers, got into the JFTC business last year, thereby eating into
the established players’ market share. The appearance of so many new players
is basically ascribed to almost nil entry barriers. As most power cable
manufacturers have found it easy to get into telecom cable manufacturing. For
these players, telecom cable was like an incremental business with low
overheads, as they already had experience in the power cable business. What made
life difficult for the existing players was the fact that everybody was fighting
for just one customer–BSNL.
It is estimated that the JFTC capacity in India during 2001-2002 was 1,651
lakh cable km (lckm). The offtake is estimated at 500 lckm, which means that
there was a lot of idle capacity. This naturally puts tremendous pressure on the
manufacturers with many of them being forced to restructure their operations.
BSNL’s offtake was 450 lckm while MTNL bought around 12 lckm. The private
basic service operators and the railways bought the rest. The JFTC off take was
certainly higher than 2000-01. However, the presence of too many manufacturers
proved costly for the industry, especially, the established manufacturers. As
this led to a fierce competition in the segment, the per lckm cost of JFTC
dropped by 16 percent.
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n The OFC Market:
In the OFC segment, the demand for OFC increased by an estimated 95 percent.
However, there was a drastic drop in the price of OFC. Value-wise, the market
was especially down in the last two quarters of 2001-02. OFC prices declined
from an average of Rs 5,500 per fiber km (fkm) at the beginning of the year to
an average of Rs 2,000 per fkm at the end of 2001-02. The prices dropped because
of several factors. This included a drop in the cost of optic fiber, domestic
over capacity, global glut as well as competition from new manufacturers. The
price of fiber which was around $80 in the beginning of the financial year
dropped to $20 by the end of the year. This led to a drop of more than 50
percent in the price of OFC. There was plenty of demand but two of the big
private service providers–Reliance and Bharti–met their complete demand
through imports. Reliance, which imported around 15,000 km of 48-fiber,
purchased them through the EPCG route at 5 percent duty. Bharti imported 12,000
km of 48-fiber during 2001-02. In effect, Reliance and Bharti together imported
more than what was locally bought by BSNL, the largest buyer of OFC in India. As
more of the demand is being fulfilled by imports, the balance sheets of the
manufacturers got affected. With the contraction in global demand, the export
market too disappointed the OFC manufacturers. There was a 84 percent fall to Rs
60.33 crore in exports from Sterlite. Similarly, Aksh’s export order of $70
million was canceled midway with the company being able to fulfill orders worth
just $3 million.
OFC manufacturers expanded their capacity though most of them did not expand
on the scale as had been planned earlier. Despite all this, OFC capacity in the
country increased from 3.3 million fckm in 2000-01 to 5.2 million fckm in
2001-02. The capacity utilization also increased to 48 percent from the previous
year’s 33 percent. In India, only two manufacturers–Aksh and Sterlite–have
enough capacity to fulfill the domestic demand but there are too many players.
The new entrants are mainly companies, which were earlier into the JFTC
business. Ironically, while everywhere the OFC market is contracting, it is
still growing in India. There was a 20-25 percent increase in demand last year.
Adding to the glut in the domestic market are foreign manufacturers like
Corning, Fujikura Sumitomo, Lucent, and LG, among others. OFC manufacturers
started the year making what one of the leading players termed ‘obnoxious’
margins. The only bright spot, according to a leading OFC manufacturer, was that
OFC prices are so low now that they are competing with JFTC and pushing out
copper–coaxial cables even in applications like cable TV. Many players feel
that while the demand for OFC in the backbone may have saturated or would be so
soon, there is still a lot of potential in the access market.
The biggest problem that JFTC manufacturers would increasingly face is that
of huge idle capacity. This, in turn, would either force them go out of the
business or drastically restructure their operations. Many of the copper cable
manufacturers might also get into the OFC business.
In 2002-03, the demand for OFC is expected to increase by 20-25 percent to
2.5 million fckm. While BSNL is going to remain the biggest buyer, private
operators like Bharti, Reliance, and Tata, are also likely to procure
significant quantity of OFC. However, even as BSNL and MNTL would continue to
source from the domestic manufacturers, private operators are likely to continue
importing OFC to meet the major portion of their demand.
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