Only 22 per cent of mobile towers in India are connected on fibre, unlike China, where as much as 80 per cent of its mobile towers are fiberised.
India can be a champion in deployment of 5G or fifth-generation networks but hinges on investments in fibre infrastructure, which are inadequate and trailing behind China, said RS Sharma, chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
At a recent industry meet, Sharma said that there’s serious concern. He said that while people are talking of 5G as a slogan, it won’t happen unless enough effort is put into investment in fibre. He further said merely 22 per cent of mobile towers in India are connected on fibre, unlike China, where as much as 80 per cent of its mobile towers are fiberised.
Sharma notified that India’s connectivity problems should be resolved with urgency and regulations and should not be constrained by the fact that only a certain set of service providers offer a particular service.
Sharma advocated the need to unbundle service and infrastructure layers at some point, saying that fibre sharing could be one of the options in infrastructure sharing.
