April 1, 2015
Sterlite Technologies plans to invest Rs 300-400 crore on expanding its fibre and cable manufacturing capacities to cater to increased demand mainly due to the data network expansion of telecom operators and the government’s National Optic Fibre Network project that aims to connect 2,50,000 panchayats.
“Growth in the telecom vertical is much faster year-over-year. Last year, it was around 30-35% and we foresee similar growth fuelled projects and deployment of our products,” said Sterlite Technologies chief executive Anand Agarwal.
The company that makes power transmission and optic-fibre products has 11 manufacturing plants, out of which nine are in India and one each in China and Brazil. It has two plants in India that produce 20 million kilometres of fibre which will be expanded to 30 million by 2017.
“We have a couple of other copper and optical fibre cable plants that produce 10 million kms of cable currently, which we would be taking to 15 million kms by December 2015,” Agarwal said. For the transmission segment, the company has a total outlay Rs 8,000 crore, out of which Rs 5,000 crore has been spent already while the remainder will be spent over 2-2.5 years.
The Pune-based company’s order book is at around Rs 4,600-4,700 crore currently, of which Rs 2,300 crore worth projects is from the telecom sector and the balance from power sector, compared with around Rs 2,000-2,300 crore last year. “The transition from voice services to data services is making telecom operators to seek for the alternate bandwidth, which optic fibre can provide,” the executive said, explaining the demand from telcos. In the fibre-to-home space, the company works with Airtel, Tata Teleservices and Idea Cellular and has done a proof of concept for Vodafone India. It also works with a number of internet service providers (ISP), including Spectranet.
“We are working very closely with service providers and trying to align with their plans,” Agarwal said, adding that 70% of data consumption happens in the fixed environment, which is why service providers are focusing on this segment.
The company has also supplied cable for the NOFN rollout across 50,000 panchayats. For the remaining 2,00,000 panchayats, the government is expected to float tenders for contracts worth around Rs 18,000 crore by May or June to lay the last mile fibre network with the help of private players, Agarwal said.