DoT to set new quality standards for optical fiber cables

In a bid to address challenges with regard to weak internet connectivity due to the deployment of poor quality optical fiber cable (OFC), the department of telecommunications (DoT) is soon expected to come up with new quality standards for telcos and internet service providers (ISPs) regarding the use of OFCs. The new guidelines once notified might require telcos and ISPs to minimise the use of legacy variant of OFCs and switch to newer generation of cables, which provide better network experience and last longer for decades, according to people aware of the matter.

Discussions are also going on to bring in a certification kind of regime wherein the telcos and ISPs will have to meet certain additional testing requirements before laying the optical fiber cables under the upcoming mandatory testing & certification of telecommunication equipment (MTCTE) regime, sources said. The Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC) under DoT is working on a new set of guidelines and standards.

Deployment of the right quality of fiber is crucial at a time when telcos are deploying 5G network across the country. A robust fiber network infrastructure provides the backhaul capacity which is necessary to meet performance goals of 5G such as higher speeds and low latency. Similarly, with additional guidelines on the quality of OFC, the government also wants to ensure the quality of connectivity under its BharatNet project.

“There are close to 2,600 ISPs in the country today and the quality of OFCs laid by them is as low as three-year shelf life,” a government official said, adding that one of the additional requirements would be for these players to deploy OFCs with longer shelf lives.

Even as issues like fiber cutting significantly affect the fiber network owing to construction over highways and roads, the quality of OFCs in use also affects the network. Currently, in India mostly legacy variants like G652D fiber are used in which the attenuation is very high. This means that upon bending of fiber the signal light is reduced, thereby limiting the network speeds.

“Fiber cuts in India are the highest in the world. Along with the right type of fiber variant, we need to introduce standards related to deployment and maintenance of fiber,” said Ankit Agarwal, managing director of STL Tech.

According to Agarwal, in Europe and USA, companies are using better series of fiber such as G657A1 that are suited for better performance and have bend-insensitive properties.

Rakesh Bhatnagar, director general of VoICE consortium said, more than the quality of cables being used, the issue is majorly related to the not complying with the prescribed construction practices at the time of laying fiber underground, which makes it much more prone to fiber cutting.

The total optical fiber length deployed in the country as of June 30 was at 3.73 million kilometers, an increase from 2.8 million kilometers at the end of September 2022, according to Digital Infrastructure Providers Association (DIPA). With the rollout of 5G, the pace of fiber deployment is happening at a monthly average rate of 101,550 kilometers.

“Most of the issues with fiber arise when it is deployed aerial. Because of non-engineered practices like unnecessary bending, not following proper techniques, etc, lead to issues with the quality of network,” said Satya N Gupta, former principal advisor at the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). According to Gupta, if the ISPs will switch to a new series of fiber then it would also increase the cost of deploying the fiber.

The government last month also asked the telecom service providers as well as ISPs to resolve issues related to the home broadband technology within three months. The issue pertains to compatibility between devices installed at the consumer premises (known as Optical Network Terminal or ONT) and ISP or a telecom equipment (known as Optical Line Terminal or OLT). The use of equipments from multi-vendors by the telecom service providers is leading to interoperability issues between the devices, thereby affecting the quality of services resulting in more downtimes, fall in speeds, etc. Financial Express