5G Will Need Sixfold More Telecom Towers, Fibre-Optic Cables: Finolex Cables

Even as the central government has auctioned 5G spectrum to telecom operators, Deepak Chhabria of Finolex Cables Ltd. sees infrastructure challenges for the rollout.

The requirement for 5G infrastructure such as towers and fibre-optic cables will be six times more than present if the services have to reach the nooks and corners of the country, Chhabria, executive chairman at India's third-largest cable maker by revenue, told BQ Prime.

According to him, only 30% of the existing telecom towers in India are connected with fibre-optic cables, while the remaining ones work on microwaves for 4G services.

For 5G services, the entire tower will require to be connected by fibre-optic cables, Chhabria said. The number of towers will also have to increase substantially from current levels, he said.

"5G services will provide internet speeds of 20 gigabytes per second, as against 2 Gbps in 4G. The size of towers will reduce, but there will be six cell sites that will be required as against one required earlier, for seamless connectivity on roads or in congested localities."

Chhabria said this will reduce the latency or delay to 1 millisecond from 20 milliseconds earlier. It will also facilitate the development of infrastructure for driverless cars and other such activities around the world, he said.

Microwaves, on which 4G services are run, are not reliable for unhindered, high-speed 5G services if there is a change in weather conditions, he said.

Cities will need fibre-ring roads connected to towers, which would in turn connect to switches for transfer of zero latency data, he said. "We have tested our fibres in Canada for test speeds of up to 400 Gbps, when the requirement under 5G is only 20 Gbps."

Set To Meet 5G Demand

One of the challenges in the rollout is that every intersection requires a different cable set—from tower cables to fibre-to-home.

Finolex Cables is geared up to meet the demand for 5G products by telecom operators, Chhabria said. "The company produces each and every type of cable required. And the capacity can be ramped up given the rollout of services."

While Indian companies have the capacity and technical know-how to meet the demand for the products needed for 5G services, it's only a question of how fast the rollout happens and how much the operators are willing to spend initially, he said.

The company has planned for annual investments of Rs 200 crore that would include expanding production capacity for fibre-optic cables, industrial wires, and the fast moving electrical goods segment.

"Our newest business, the fast moving electrical goods segment—ceiling fans, LED lights, water heaters, switches, switch gears—had a turnover of Rs 300 crore in FY22. In the long term, we expect each of the products to have a turnover of Rs 500 crore."

Finolex Cables is also in the process of moving away from large single-channel partners to two-tier distributors and the retail format. Over the last two years, the company has grown its distributorship to 600 and retail network to 1,50,000, he said.

"We plan to increase the retail network to 2,00,000 over the next one year. We want to piggy-back (on) the retail network and distributorship to penetrate the tier-2 and tier-3 cities for our fast moving electrical goods business."