There’s a telecommunications crisis brewing in India and it has nothing to do with 2G, 3G or even 4G. India’s communication infrastructure at the ‘last mile’ — the part that connects your home or office to a communications provider — is rotten.
(This story appears in the 11 March, 2011 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
There is a discrepancy one of the statements mentioned in the article below-"The next best option, coaxial fibres that take cable TV into 80 million households, carry mostly low bandwidth analog signals". If we look at the coaxial channel bandwidth from the frequency spectrum that is used for signal transmission, then each analog TV channel occupies 8MHz of spectrum. 100 analog TV channels occupy 800 MHz of spectrum. The 800 MHz of spectrum that is occupied by analog TV channels cannot be considered low bandwidth by any standards. The author should understand that BWA spectrum auction that was done recently was a mere 20MHz. How the 800 MHz of cable spectrum is what matters. If digital signal transmission is used then the technology used has an impact on the spectrum efficiency, which in turn affects the digital data rate in bits per second. Wireless broadband technologies such as LTE have a peak spectrum efficiency of 15 bits/sec/Hz. Over 20 MHz, it corresponds to 300Mbps of digital data rate. Over 800MHz, it is 12 Gbps of data rate. It is unlikely that 15bits/sec/Hz is practically feasible over coaxial cable over a length of 1 mile. If we take a conservative estimate based on other OFDM technologies such as EOC, a spectral efficiency of 6 bits/sec/Hz is achievable over one mile. Over 800 MHz of spectrum, this corresponds to 4.8 Gbps of digital data rate. Hence coaxial cable cannot be considered low bandwidth by any means. The fact that we can see 100 analog TV channels indicate that digital modulation techniques and error correction techniques, if properly utilized can unleash the potential of this medium.I do agree that fiber is the way to go in future. However till the ONU costs can come down to levels that can be afforded by mass markets, it is better to use the coaxial cable for the time being.
on Apr 1, 2011Sir, In my state kerala, BSNL started laying optic fiber cable only after mobile service stated operation in India. If govt. gave more importance to mobile then they could have saved huge amount spend for laying cables. According to me govt. should reduce spectrum charges and should increase tax for imported products like oil.
on Mar 18, 2011