WCA March 2018

India Insight

Manufacturing deal Indian state-owned telecom service provider Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Fibre Home to jointly manufacture telecom equipment and optical fibre cables in BSNL factories.

The partnership enables AFL to offer fibre distribution and cable management solutions, including fibre cable designs for data centres, to the Indian market. “As strategic partner we will provide manufacturing facilities, sales, and marketing support to AFL, which will bring in technology, products and applications,” said Citadel chief executive K K Shetty. AFL – USA Website : www.aflglobal.com City transport The Indian mass-transit operator Metro Link Express for Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad (MEGA) has commissioned Siemens to electrify a 39.2km metro line in the Indian city of Ahmedabad. The line, currently under construction, will run through Ahmedabad city in two corridors, east to west and north to south. Siemens will be responsible for the entire electrification programme of the new double-track metro line. In addition, Siemens will provide a SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system for monitoring and controlling the traction power. The order is expected to be worth over €76 million. The metro line is expected to play a pivotal role in boosting quality of life and economic growth in the city and its region. Including the Ahmedabad project, Siemens is executing electrification projects for six cities in India, the other five being Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Nagpur and Greater Noida. Metro Link Express for Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad (MEGA) – India Website : www.gujaratmetrorail.com New power for Nepal – and India Nepal’s national grid was boosted by new installed capacity of around 150MW during 2017. New projects will continue to come online during 2018, including the 30MW Chameliya Hydropower Project that was due to begin generating in January. The 456MW Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Project, owned by the NEA, is nearing completion, and is set to generate electricity in July. Together with the hydropower projects, the energy sector has achieved a major milestone in the area of transmission line construction with the 132kV Blanch-Attariya transmission line. The line is already in operation, carrying electricity produced by the Chameliya hydropower facility. Cross-border transmission lines are also to be developed between Nepal and India, and Nepal and China.

At present, BSNL has seven telecom factories manufacturing customer-end equipment and testing tools solely for use by BSNL. “This agreement will help India get high quality telecom equipment at reasonable cost and will also reduce deployment time. BSNL always strives hard to fulfil government dreams by adopting workable and practical programmes like this,” said BSNL CMD Anupam Shrivastava. Fibre Home (the parent company of Fibre Home India Ltd) has one of the largest telecom manufacturing bases in China, manufacturing equipment for the transport and access layers of the telecommunications network. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd – India Website : www.bsnl.co.in Thinking local in India American industrial equipment manufacturer AFL is moving into India to make optical fibre cable and accessories for the local and overseas markets. “We have entered into a strategic alliance with Citadel Intelligent Systems Ltd (CIS), a start-up in Bengaluru, to make our products for the Indian and global markets in hyperscale computing and data centre segments,” said AFL chief executive Jody Gallagher. AFL is a subsidiary of Japan’s Fujikura Ltd. “The demand for high speed broadband, investment in IT, and telecommunications, accelerated by the government’s ‘Make in India’, ‘Smart Cities’ and ‘Digital India’ initiatives offer exponential growth for optical fibre solutions,” explained Mr Gallagher. ❍ The signing of the memorandum of understanding between Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Fibre Home

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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2016 March/Ap il 2018