Fiber optic key to India's growing telecom infrastructure

India's size and population present big challenges to installing a robust telecommunications network. However, the nation still boasts the second-largest phone usage base and the third-largest Internetbase in the world. The Indian government has prioritized the connection of high-speed telecommunications services available to even remote villages. The development of fiber-optic cable and other Ethernet solutions has played a major role in this evolution.

A recent editorial released by Indian news resource BW Businessworld notes how critical fiber-optic technology has been for expanding the accessibility of broadband in India. Fiber-opticcables allows for connections to be installed over long distance; current copper-only systems are limited to short-range application to minimize interference from data noise. Fiber-optic systems are immune to slowdown from data noise and BW Businessworld described the technology as the appropriate physical medium for carrying high bandwidth to India's most isolated communities.

India's need for high-end fiber-optic upgrades is even more apparent when looking at the nation's connectivity speeds. The country's average Internetspeed clocks in at 1.3 Mbps. Compare this rate to China and Korea, nearby countries whose speeds range (respectively) from 8.3 Mbps to 14.2 Mbps. Even worse is the fact that less than 1 percent of India's population has access to an Internet connection that would allow for streaming media, sharing files, playing gamesor work-related applications.

Several industries are interested in investing in India as the telecommunication infrastructure improves. The Hindu Business Line reports that even U.S. backed international firms are intrigued by the the business opportunities that exist in a India with full access to broadband. Much of this shift is being driven by Indian consumers themselves. A growing market for 3G and 4G mobile connectivity, parallel to the expanding Indian middle-class, has created incentive for much of India's anticipated telecommunications growth.

Expansions to India's telecommunications infrastructure are likely to incorporate hybrid-coaxial networks to ease the costs of implementation. Hybrid-coaxial networks make use of fiber-to-copper media converters to connect existing copper installations to new optic fiber wires. This networking strategy offers many benefits including reduced costs for installing all-new optic fiber systems. This flexibility offers new solutions for connecting high-speed Internet toIndia's rural and suburban neighborhoods; the high costs of fiber-optic cable is one of the largest barriers preventing broadband connections from reaching every corner of India.

Perle has an extensive range of Managed and Unmanaged Fiber Media Converters to extended copper-based Ethernet equipment over a fiber optic link, multimode to multimode and multimode to single mode fiber up to 160 km.