Fiber has stronghold in backhaul connectivity: Industry

Time of India

01-05-2025

NEW DELHI: Fiber has a stronghold in underpinning India's telecom infrastructure in the backhaul, despite the emergence of new technologies, according to executives of the country's top telecom carriers.
'More fiber will ensure coverage of newer areas on fiber. Besides fiber, there are technologies like microwave and E-band, which have more scalability and capability, but also have limitations. So these technologies have to complement fiber,' said Deepak Sanghi, executive vice president, head (IP & transport network),
Bharti Airtel
, at the eighth edition of the ETTelecom 5G Congress 2025, which concluded on March 24.
Sanghi said cost engineering and optimisations are equally necessary before implementing a new network connectivity technology, particularly in a cost-sensitive market like India.
'Any technology is good to implement unless and until we work on the cost aspect. There have to be significant changes from this perspective so that we stay continuously on the path to lower cost per bit,' he added.
Girish Dave, head (5G, 6G & AI solution management), Jio, in turn, said that fiber continues to be the 'gold standard' for physical connectivity, especially for last-mile access in urban regions.
'But in the dense urban areas where it is not feasible to put a fiber, we use outdoor CPEs (consumer premises equipment) to connect to the radio base station. Using this arrangement, we are comfortably achieving up to 1 Gbps speeds with C-band spectrum. So this is the level of innovation happening in the industry,' Dave added.
Jophy Varghese, APAC head (system integration) & country manager (India),
Verizon Business
, noted that telcos face several challenges in upgrading their backhaul networks, ranging from cost, interoperability, vendor lock-in, regulatory compliance, and security.
'So I think the companies are investing heavily to ensure that while they are undergoing this mega shift, the customer experience does not get impacted,' Varghese added. 'I think the hyperscalers and the overall ecosystems are coming together to ensure that we are gearing up for the future. We would see more partnerships being forged in this space as we move forward.'
Pashupati Singh, director (account management),
Ciena
, said that the industry is increasingly making backhaul networks robust to cater to the demands for a nearly 100% uptime and ultra-low-latency bandwidth.
'Here, AI and machine learning (ML) play a very important role for any network. With AI and ML of late, globally we have been able to develop algorithms that help us understand and proactively predict events in real-time to prevent outages and service disruptions,' Singh said. 'With the help of these, we will help everyone to reduce the cost per bit and improve uptime.'
'O&M (operations & maintenance) plays a vital role in any network. The guaranteed uptime and the quality of fiber also play vital roles. Improvement of the fiber quality is the most important factor for any fiber backbone, or you will have a jittery experience,' said Sandeep Donde, founder & CEO,
Microscan Infocomm
.
Donde suggested that the telecom industry may consider consolidating its fiber infrastructure footprint to attain synergies, resiliency, and quality of services.
'Fiber plays a major role in backhaul to an ordinary person, such as for connecting a tower to the core network or a customer premises to the internet. The deeper the fiber, the less the load on backhaul. Backhaul needs to be very strong, especially for companies like us specialising in content delivery,' said Anil Malhotra, chief revenue officer (affiliate sales) and head (public & regulatory affairs), Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited.
Akanksha Saxena, director, KPMG India, moderated the panel discussion.