The demand for latest-generation optical transport networks is likely to skyrocket in 2022 and 2023, believes Ryan Perera, Ciena‘s India head.
Apart from the impending launch of 5G, the growing data center ecosystem and activities in the submarine space will result in an exponential growth in the optical transport segment in the country.
“India only has two landing stations right now, one in Chennai and another one in Mumbai,” said Perera.
“A couple of very large networks are getting commissioned into those two locations by early to mid-2023. It is estimated that somewhere around 72Tb of new capacity will enter through these networks. These are unprecedented levels of capacity that will enter the country both from the east and the west side.”
This will lead to growth in demand for optical networks.
The second reason is India’s growing data center ecosystem. Data localization requirements coupled with increasing consumption have led to a growing data center network.
Most of the players are investing in expansion. For instance, in 2021, Google opened a center in Delhi’s National Capital Region after opening one in Mumbai in 2017.
Microsoft recently announced plans to acquire land in Hyderabad to set up new data centers. In addition, Nxtra by Airtel is planning to invest INR50 billion ($654 million) by 2025 to scale its network of large and edge data centers.
On top of this, operators could not expand in 2020 and 2021 because of COVID-19 restrictions.
“The operators made vendor selections but could not roll out. We will see the real implementation happen this year and in the coming year,” added Perera.
The company claims to be the biggest beneficiary of the Indian government blocking Chinese vendors from operating in the country.
Chinese vendors were prevented from participating in 5G trials and have yet to be award trusted source approval.
“We entered Vodafone Idea only in 2021, but [at] others [Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio] we already had incumbency, and we increased our share because of the ban India put on the Chinese vendors,” says Perera.
India is one of the largest optical transport markets in the world. Ciena competes with Nokia, Tejas Networks, Juniper and ECI, among others here.