Wired Broad band in India

Wired broad band is one of the most cost effective of building the backbone to deliver high speed connectivity to Tier II, Tier III cities and rural India. While providing "Open Access" on the existing fiber and copper is one of the best ways there are other interesting possibilities as well waiting to be exploited.

And that is the Optic Fiber run on Transmission Lines. Composite Optic Power Ground wire, which is run on existing Transmission Lines serve two distinct purposes. It acts as earth wire for the Line(shielding) and also provide Optic fiber (up to 24 fibers as a standard).

With the Electrical utilities, already having a ready made "Right of Way" , these Optic Fibers which are run on thees lines with the end equipments housed in various stations provide the opportunity to take Fiber along all the main state trunk routes. It also saves enormous costs for the utilities who are increasingly going on for Automation of billing, etc for which they are currently hiring broad band from ISPs.

With the enormous reach of the Electrical utility in the state and their established mechanism to provide O&M services, the Optic fiber once laid will provide additional revenue streams. It is also easy to break the fiber at intermediate Substations and add signals, This facilitates additions of intermediate stations which are other wise unattractive locations from the revenue point of view of Service Providers. One can also look at the possibility of leasing out space for the Mobile operators in the substations, along with back bone connectivity to provide wireless signals for the last mile.

For the utilities this provide a new stream of revenue and the government a cost effective solution.

Once the Optic fiber is in place connected, the Government can lease some of the fibers for its educational services, Telemedicine and e Governance. The surplus fiber can be either leased out as "Dark Fiber " or the utility can provide bandwidth as well.

TRAI shall take the decision to provide "Automatic" state level Service Provider's Licence to the Electric public utility as a starter.

PGCIL has already laid the fiber and is generating revenues. Some of the forward looking electricity boards are already working on it and has commenced the work. The time is right to take a decisive move on this initiative.

OPGW - A communication solution for Power Utilities

Any Power utility has to set up dedicated communication links connecting all its operating centers spread through out its geographical area. This network primarily conveys voice signals (conventional telephone conversations), data regarding the operating parameters of the system and electrical protection of transmission line. As on date this is achieved through Power Line Carrier Communication (PLCC) and Microwave. Microwave is weather Dependant and does see rare interruptions, but is expensive as the utility has to pay annual license fees. PLCC has a limitation as it can carry only narrow band signals.

The alternative is Fiber Optic based communication, which has phenomenal band width. For this purpose one has to lay the optic fiber physically connecting the end points. Since the electricity board has dedicated transmission lines Cris crossing the entire state, a scheme was thought of to exploit this "Right of Way" which is other wise lying idle.

In this scheme the earth wire ( a galvanized steel wire which is run on the peak of transmission lines) is replaced with a OPGW (Composite Optical Power Ground Wire) which serves the purpose of acting as earth wire and has an embedded stainless steel tube which carry a bunch of fibers.The transmission line terminates at Receiving stations or generating stations and at these locations the OPGW is terminated and the fiber carried to special equipments called Optical Line Terminal Equipments(OLTE). These OLTE are similar to the ones currently used by the major telecom companies and carry signals in the SDH format. ( An international telecom standard accepted across globe).

The signals of the utility which may start from their telephone exchanges or computer network such as Ethernet or their Data Commendation equipments called RTU(remote terminal unit) or connected to the SDH gateway through specialised equipment called Primary multiplexer at the sending end. At the receiving end these are again "dropped" out of SDH gateway through another set of similar equipment and connected to the exchange or ethernet.

Some of the major advantages of this system over existing comparable communication links of Electricity utilities are the phenomenal increase in band width at a low investment. With increased automation being taken by TNEB in terms of computerisation of billing and collection, accessing their main load center points and generating stations on Real time basis, this network will go a long way in providing fail safe & effective communication link.

Last but not the least - the replacement of existing earth wire typically should call for shutting down the concerned power lines. In this case M/s BGR Energy System, the agency executing this project on a turnkey basis are adopting a system called "live Line working" where they will replace the existing earth wire with optic fiber embedded Ground wire(OPGW) under live conditions, minimising inconvenience to consumers.

Once the Optic fiber is laid and commissioned, TNEB has in its asset a dedicated link which can be used by other state departments. TNEB can also lease out to outsiders after complying with the necessary regulatory compliance's.

Till recently PGCIL the central power utility has been implementing these schemes at the central level across states. TNEB's efforts is pioneering in this regard as this will connect their main data centers across the state with their own network