HFCL Limited to scale up FTTH cable production by 33%

NEW DELHI: HFCL Limited, one of the top two India's optic fibre makers, is planning to increase Fibre-to-the-Home or FTTH cable production by 33% at its Hyderabad facility following the robust domestic and overseas demand, and a Rs 7,500-crore order book.

"We are going to increase capacity of FTTH cables in Hyderabad in near future by 33% from the present capacity, and aiming to complete this in next 3 months," Mahendra Nahata, managing director of HFCL said, adding that the Delhi-based company is currently supplying cable to 'large operators' deploying last-mile fibre network for home and enterprise users.

India's top two incumbents - Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel NSE -0.37 %, in a bid to outsmart each other, are aggressively focussing on creating a dense Fibre-to-the-Home networks in large cities for triple-play services that has also gained much traction on the back of work-from-home due to Covid-19-induced lockdown.

While telecom carriers soon-to-be shift to next-generation networks, the predominant fibre maker is optimistic to corner new orders domestically as well as globally with tower fiberisation playing a central role for seamless data services delivery. India has only a third of 6.25 lakh towers fiberised currently.
"4G and 5G will co-exist, and the number of cell sites in 5G will be at least three times that of 4G. So more number of cell sites means that more number of sites are to be connected so demand for optic-fibre cable (OFC) will eventually increase, Nahata said.

Last December, the company started commercial cable production at its new unit at Telangana's Hyderabad, as a part of its expansion strategy, and has become the country's largest manufacturer in the FTTH cable domain. It has a capacity to manufacture nearly 20 million fibre kilometres (fkm) of optic-fibre cable annually.

It has invested a total of Rs 300-crore in fully-automated high-speed FTTH cable manufacturing unit in Telangana that produces more than 6 lakh fibre kilometres (fkm) of cable per annum.

"We have a good order book of about Rs. 7,500 crore, which is double the revenue of last year. So, new orders are coming in. We will increase our revenue from OFC, and through company-designed products, with an emphasis on research & development (R&D)," the promoter said, and added that the homegrown firm is focussing on capitalising upcoming opportunities worldwide.

The company is also evaluating the recently unveiled notice inviting tender (NIT) by state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), seeking proposals to procure radio and core network on a turnkey basis in a bid to facilitate domestic vendors as a part of Centre's Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) campaign.

Recently, HFCL has been able to achieve a milestone of supplying 10 lakh units of wireless networking portfolio comprising Wi-Fi access points and point-to-point unlicensed band radios in less than a year of starting production.
Source