With the announcement of the Smart Cities & Digital India campaign by the Government, the focus is back on the last mile connectivity and increased penetration of high speed network capabilities through Wi-fi and local hotspot technologies, feels Mr. Satyendra Gupta.

AKSH OPTIFIBRE LIMITED, a 27 year old company, started manufacturing optical fibre and optical fibre cables (OFC) in 1994. In 1996-97 Aksh acquired Fibre Reinforced Plastic Rods (FRP) business which is a key raw material for Optical Fibre Cables. The two key raw materials, optical fibre and FRP rod, constituting 70 percent of cost of optical fibre cables are manufactured in-house by the copmany. This makes Aksh as one of the most cost effective optical fibre cable manufacturer.

Aksh specialize in manufacturing of various optical fibre cables like aerial, duct, armoured, indoor and outdoor FTTH drop cables meeting all the International ITU-T standards. Wire & Cable India recently had a conversation with Mr. Satyendra Gupta, Executive Director & CFO, Aksh Optifibre Limited to know his perspectives on the telecom industry, its growth and much desired policy environment. Here is what he has to say:

Wire & Cable India: How was the Indian telecom equipment industry’s performance in 2015?

Satyendra Gupta: As we’ve seen over the past few years, telecom continues to be a growing, vibrant ecosystem, expanding rapidly across a broad swath of product, technology and services companies. And we believe that there are plenty of new and emerging opportunities which could continue to provide robust growth across all of the telecommunications sub-sectors.

And all this growth is being fuelled with a single cell- High Speed data. The need for building high speed information highways has never been so great. With the launch of 4G/LTE technologies by Indian operators in the past year, the number of consumers accessing information through these highways has risen 10 fold to over 15 million subscribers at the end of 2015, as per industry reports.

WCI: What are the emerging technology trends in the Indian telecom space?

SG: With the announcement of the Smart Cities & Digital India campaign by the Government, the focus is back on the last mile connectivity and increased penetration of high speed network capabilities through Wi-fi and local hotspot technologies. Many government institutions, common service areas like Railway/Bus Stations have already been internet enabled to ease the access of information for the people.

While this shows the commitment and follow up that the government has over its policies, I personally feel a little bit more could be done to advance this cause. Policy related to standardization for fibre deployment in new buildings, new infrastructure development; both for government and private developers, to be mandatorily FTTH Infrastructure compliant with fibre reaching directly to the home/office of the consumer. Our previous experience and learning’s with FTTH deployment have shown major impact on creation of a new framework for the implementation of this technology.

WCI: What are your views on government’s Digital India and Make in India campaigns? How are these likely to benefit the telecom equipment industry?

SG: To back the need for new age communication equipment and deployment technologies, Make In India is fast becoming a popular initiative not just by International manufacturers, but also Indian manufacturers who are willing to expand their current capacities to aid the increased domestic demand owing to the large scale government programmes. Make in India is just not about tax breaks, single window clearances and overall ease of doing business, it’s about being proud that once again our country is on the cross roads of becoming a major technology/industrial manufacturing hub- a spot that was being rapidly vanquished by China, had these control measures been not put in place.

However, there is still much to be done to aid this growth internally. National connectivity both through land and rail needs a major overhaul. Connectivity to major ports of dispatch like Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata etc. are reeling under bad road infrastructure for years. Much needs to be done in this regard to continue the growth story and attract greater investment.

WCI: What are your growth expectations from the Indian telecom market? What is your regulatory wishlist?

SG: The government policies have also played a major role in aiding all of these initiatives to generate momentum. While all government projects are required to use “Made in India” cables only, no such policy is yet in place for the private telecom operators. I feel that private telecom operators to be regulated to use indigenously manufactured optical fibre cables. The use of high fibre count cables on the highways and inter city could also help in speedier roll out of the network. With the focus being on commercial deployment, upcoming national level telecom projects must initiate the use of high fibre count cables as they have a better ROI over a large subscriber base like India.

To summarize, the Indian Telecom Industry is at a very crucial junction in its growth story. Get the policy, regulation and implementation right and we will have a world class telecom infrastructure in place for years to come. Get one of them wrong; we will have a great many grieves to rectify…