India’s Leading fiber optic cable manufacturer, Sterlite Technologies has bagged a smart city project in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. The contract entails the creation of a Wi-Fi City with applications such as smart parking and lighting.
Sterlite will create 400-500 access points for Wi-Fi and plans to provide 30 minutes of free Wi-Fi connection. Sterlite estimates that the project cost would be around 300 to 400 million Indian Rupees, which is around 3.5 to 6 million US dollars. Fiber optic cables will provide the necessary support at the backend of the network to deliver bandwidth to the Wi-Fi spots.
The Gandhinagar project is part of the Gujarat government’s initiative to develop some cities as smart cities. Sterlite was in talks with all the 20 states mentioned in the smart city list by India’s central government. India’s central government had started pushing the state governments to speed up activities leading to the delivery of broadband services to the public. Government spending in the telecom sector has also been increasing. Sterlite also believes the share of its revenue will go up in the coming years. The private sector has been investing more in the telecom sector in India. That situation is changing now. The government’s participation and investment are on the raise and this contribution will act as a catalyst for growth in the telecom sector.
Fiber optic network projects such as BharatNet and Defense projects are promising to the development of broadband in the country, from which private sector industries will benefit. Sterlite had already bagged orders worth 300 million US dollars from the Indian Army, under which the company will connect defense establishments in Jammu & Kashmir with fiber optic cables.
Sterlite is in the final stages of demerging its power business and is looking to diversify from its telecom products business to more managed networks and services profile. The company has diversified from merely supplying products to deployments and service. In 2015, Sterlite acquired Elitecore Technologies that gave them expertise in telecom services.
India has so far deployed optical fiber cable networks of around 80 million fiber kilometers while neighboring China has about 1.2 billion fiber kilometers deployed fiber optic networks. India has huge potential for growth in the coming years and needs optical fiber cables to connect its villages. Considering its population and the fact that a country needs around 1 kilometer of fiber per person, India has a long way to go with the deployment of fiber optic networks. India needs more than 1.1 billion fiber kilometers in the future. Fiber optic products suppliers would have a bright future in India.
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