Co-Deployment of Fibre Optic Cables along Transport Infrastructure for SDGs Including Cross Border December 2018 Final Report The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations Secretariat. The opinions, figures and estimates set forth in this publication are the responsibility of the authors and should not necessarily be considered as reflecting the views or carrying the endorsement of the United Nations. The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Mention of firm names and commercial products does not imply the endorsement of the United Nations. This publication is issued without formal editing. Page 2 of 116 Final Report Acknowledgements This document was prepared by Mr. Arun Saksena, international consultant appointed by ESCAP, working on behalf of the Asian Institute of Transport Development (AITD), New Delhi. The overall in-charge official for the study was Mr. Ishtiaque Ahmed, Economic Affairs Officer, Transport Infrastructure Section, Transport Division of ESCAP. Valuable advices were extended by Mr. Weimin Ren, Director Transport Division of ESCAP. Additionally, Mr. Matthew Perkins, Economic Affairs Officer, and Ms. Atsuko Okuda, Chief, Information and Communications Technology and Development Section, Ms. Tiziana Bonapace, Director, Information and Communications Technology and Disaster Risk Reduction Division of ESCAP provided constructive inputs to the study. The study team received extremely useful guidance from Mr. Hongjoo Hahm, Deputy Executive Secretary of ESCAP. The study also received support of the Asian Institute of Transport Development (AITD), New Delhi, especially the Chairman, Mr. K. L. Thapar and other transport experts including Mr. D. P. Gupta and Mr. B. N. Puri. Individual consultants from the following countries appointed by ESCAP provided valuable inputs to the report. • China (Prof. Xiaojing Wang) • India (Mr. Arun Saksena) • Republic of Korea (Dr. Mr. Hong Sang Yeon and Mr. Oh-Joung Kwon) • Russian Federation (Mr. Vladimir Kryuchkov) • Turkey (Mr. Murat Dursun Barut) • Thailand (Mr. Tongkarn Kaewchalermtong) Experts and delegates from member countries of the Asian Highway and Trans-Asian Railway Networks have offered valuable comments on the development of this document. The inputs were provided by both transport sector and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector professionals and experts. Page 3 of 116 Final Report III. Fibre Optic Cables Co-deployment along Highways 1. National Co-deployment Status: Status of co-deployment in countries, which were associated in the study is brought out below. 1. India: FOC laying started in 1980s and since then, the network has been expanded by various entities in the private and public sectors, in most cases, separately. FOC has been laid on/along the RoW of highways mostly in HDPE pipes directly buried in ground at the depth of 1.0 to 1.6 meters. FOC is generally blown through (pulled in some cases) HDPE ducts. Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) is done for Rail and Road Crossings. Galvanised Iron Pipe (GI) is used along with HDPE pipes at crossings and on bridges/culverts. Spread of highways has been increasing and they are steadily becoming a preferred path for FOC networks for data and information exchange for meeting the requirement of transportation as well. On highways, systems are being deployed for providing safer and comfortable travel using traffic control, asset management and travel information systems called Intelligent Transport System (ITS). Granting permissions and levying charges for use of RoW has been driven by requirements of commercial gains or public use with directions emerging from Government and Regulatory Authority. Initiatives of the entities are brought out briefly. 1. BharatNet or National Optical Fibre Network: NOFN will provide a minimum of 100 MBps broadband connectivity to each of the 250,000 Gram Panchayats (GP) in the country covering nearly 625,000 villages to transform to Digital India. Last mile connectivity for 700,000 WiFi hotspots to cover 625,000 villages of India, with 2 to 5 wifi hotspots per GP, have been planned by connecting high- speed 4G base stations of TSPs. Commercially non-viable WiFi hotspots will be subsidised by the Indian Government grant of ₹36,000 million to sustain operations. Government has discounted the bulk BharatNet bandwidth rates to the Commercial Telecom Operators by 75% to enable them to offer affordable, competitive and commercially viable 4G broadband deals to the rural customers. The ₹450,000 million Union Government share of funding will come from the "Universal Services Obligation Fund" of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) with additional funding by State Governments to connect all gram panchayats. BharatNet is, world's largest, rural broadband connectivity program. Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) has been set up to undertake the work of NOFN implementation as well as own the entire network. RailTel Corporation of India Ltd (RailTel) has been selected as one of the implementing partner along with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) & Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (PGCIL), to lay FOC network to connect the panchayats with respective Block HQs. BSNL has its own long-haul fibre network, covering more than 470 thousand kms spread over the country. 14 Highways Final Report STATUS OF BHARATNET (NOFN) AS ON 30.04.2018 (Table 1) S.N. Description of Work Status 1 FOC Pipe laid 269,139 Kms (118,263 GPs) 2 Optical Fibre laid 272,137 Kms (115,356 GPs) 3 Tenders Finalized 3291 Blocks / 122,828 GPs 4 Work Started* 3281 Blocks / 121,855 GPs Current Weekly performance of 5 740 Kms Optical Fibre laying Current Weekly performance of 6 526 Kms FOC Pipe laying Optical Fibre Cable Delivered on 7 3,31,750 Kms site 8 Service Ready GPs 1,09,099 GPs * does not include the data of Andhra Pradesh. 2. Defence Network: Security and scalability of networks are important system requirements of primary concern, where terrain and weather also play a key role in deciding the technology. Survivability of networks and sustainability under adverse war conditions needs to be ensured taking into account frequent movement of equipment and short notice deployment of defence contingent. • These are dependent on local networks and public sector operators such as BSNL and RailTel for communication services. The static switched communication network integrates the telecommunication infrastructure of the hinterland with tactical communication networks requiring considerable investments in optic fibre networks. Initiative of Network for Spectrum (NFS) project, which is an exclusive secure, multi-service and multi-protocol optic fibre-based nationwide communication network requires around 60,000 Kms of FOC roll-out for connecting the stations of defence forces. National Long Distance and Access Networks are planned for 45,000 kms and 15,000 kms respectively. 3. RailTel FOC on Roads: Under the BharatNet initiative of BBNL, RailTel has been entrusted with the task of connecting 36,000 gram panchayats across 120 districts in 11 states on Optical Fibre. Under the first phase of the project, 19,515 kms of FOC to 8,500 GPs has been connected. Later, Daman and Diu have been added to the scope of work under this project. ICT projects in different states have been assigned to RailTel, which includes laying 10,000 kms of Optical Fibre network in six North-eastern States under the Universal Service Obligation (USO) 15 Highways Final Report Fund of the DoT and managing Haryana’s state wide area network project. RailTel is associated in provision of 15,000 kms of FOC for the Army Static Switched Communication Network (ASCON). • RailTel is expanding its project to take high-speed internet (RailWire) to rural homes in Tamil Nadu by linking its FOC network to existing cable TV connections. RailTel has entered into revenue-sharing partnerships that allow Multi-System Operators (MSOs) and Local Cable Operators (LCOs) to draw from its FOC Points of Presence (PoP) established along railway lines to provide last-mile connectivity to rural households. Brand RailWire currently delivers Internet speeds ranging from 256 kbps to 10 MBps to about 2,500 subscribers in 16 of the 32 districts in the State. The business is growing at the rate of about 3,000 new connections every month, officials said. 4. Private Sector Units - India: Intense competition in the telecom sector exists in the Indian sub-continent and therefore a very limited data is available on the telecom & networking infrastructure in public domain. Most of these entities are reluctant to share their network deployment & plan infrastructure. Some details as available are appended: a. Airtel has acquired spectrum worth in auctions and its cumulative investments in mobile business is US$ 30 billion. Airtel is executing a comprehensive three-year network transformation initiative, “Project Leap” necessitating capex investments of around US$ 9 billion. The Company will be adding 80,000 new broadband enabled base stations under the initiative to its current base of 120,000 broadband sites. After expanding its mobile broadband coverage to all towns and over 250,000 villages, Airtel is committed to offer mobile broadband to over 500,000 villages over the next three years. It will cumulatively deploy more than 550,000 km of domestic & international fibre to create a powerful, future-ready Internet backbone. (State of Broadband - Broadband Commission Sept 2016 ITU Report) b. Reliance Globalcom, a division of Reliance Communications, spearheads the Global Telecom operations of India's largest Integrated Telecom Service Provider. Reliance Globalcom brings together Enterprise Services, Capacity Sales, Managed Services and a bouquet of Retail Products and Services comprising of Global Voice, Internet Solutions and Value Added Services.