Optic fibre link along Delhi-Mumbai, Hyderabad-Bengaluru expressways
Optical fibres will help telecommunications connectivity along the way, allowing, for instance, mobile network companies to use these to create tower relays and offer coverage along these routes
The upcoming Delhi-Mumbai Expressway and Hyderabad-Bengaluru Expressway will be the first projects in the country to be enabled with an optical fibre cable network as part of India’s National Broadband Mission (NBM), senior officials in the ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) said.
Optical fibres will help telecommunications connectivity along the way, allowing, for instance, mobile network companies to use these to create tower relays and offer coverage along these routes. These fibre cable networks will also serve as a crucial backbone for 5G mobile telephone services.
Under the NBM, which was launched in December 2019, the government has set a target of 70% fiberisation to take India’s fibre footprint to 5.5 million kilometres by 2024. However, India is yet to hit the 40% mark in laying optical fibre cables so far.
To expedite the work, the government has decided that optical fibre cables will be laid along all upcoming Greenfield and Brownfield expressway corridors. The task of digging and laying these cables has been assigned to the road transport ministry’s National Highways Logistics Management Limited (NHLML), which is a special purpose vehicle of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
“The OFC (optical fibre cable project) will first be carried out on pilot basis on Delhi-Mumbai and Hyderabad-Bengaluru expressways. In this, we are aiming to lay OFCs of a total length of 2,000 kilometres. NHLML will create a dark (inactive) fibre infrastructure which stakeholders in the market will be able to use in a direct plug-and-play model, meaning it will be ready to use. We recently completed the OFC feasibility studies for both the expressways,” NHLML CEO Prakash Gaur said.
The OFC project is also significant since the government is working on the Bharatmala Phase-1 project, which includes a network of multi-modal logistic parks and stations with significant junctions along these high speed roadway corridors. These optical fibre networks will then be required to feed connectivity in the upcoming economic zones that will come up along the expressways.
Under Phase-1 of the plan, of which the two pilot projects are a part, the NHLML will lay OFCs along the major upcoming Greenfield corridors, totalling up to 10,000 kilometres. The project cost for phase-1 has been estimated at ₹3,000 crore, a government document seen by HT showed.
The project is also one of the key highlights under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship Gati Shakti programme, which is a common platform to remove red tapism and multiplicity of authorities while expediting projects. A senior road ministry official said the government has had several rounds of meetings with the department of telecommunications (DoT) for the project.
“Ideally, the telecommunications ministry could have done it. But, NHAI is the land owning agency of all its highways and expressways. Letting other stakeholders dig along these corridors would mean we would be back to square one where projects keep getting delayed for approvals and lack of coordination. For all these years, this is what’s happening, one agency builds a road and another digs it up to lay cables or water pipelines and does not rebuild the road in the same manner or quality,” the official said, seeking anonymity.
“So, this time the MoRTH has decided to build all the supporting infrastructure along all its expressways and highways so that other agencies or companies can directly use the services in a plug and play model,” the official added.