25 February 2003 -- Fibre deployment in India has surged over the past two years, according to a new KMI report, Single mode Optical Fiber & Cable in India. Following India's adoption of its "New Telecom Policy" in 1999, domestic demand for optical fiber and cable increased dramatically.
As fiberoptic cable demand began to tumble in North America and Europe in late 2000, India was experiencing a boom. At the end of 1995, India had cumulatively installed 283,600 fibre-km.
By the end of 2000, cumulative installations were 2.5m fibre-km. By the end of 2002, cumulative installations had more than doubled to 6.7m fibre-km. And in 2002, India ranked fourth in global demand - just behind Japan, the United States, and China.
India is not immune to the global boom and bust cycle in optical networks. As a result of the completion of major long-haul network builds, KMI projects that annual fiber deployment in India will start to decline in 2003. KMI projects a compound annual decline of 15% in fibre-optic cable deployment from 2003 to 2007, when cumulative deployment will reach 14.6m fibre-km.
Nevertheless, India will remain a strong component of global demand for fibre throughout the forecast period. Moreover, deployments for metro/access applications, which have been small, will grow sharply as India tries to achieve aggressive targets for increasing teledensity to average global levels.
Over the next few years, fibre-optic equipment providers will find a healthy market for lighting new network segments and for upgrading old networks with higher-capacity systems to meet new traffic demands on Indian backbones.
KMI's Single-mode Optical Fiber & Cable in India tracks annual single-mode fiberoptic cable deployment by 13 major carriers in India from 2000 to planned installments in 2003. For each carrier, the research company estimates deployment by route-km, fibre count, and fibre-km for both long-distance backbones and metro/access applications.
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