New underground fiber project for Pune residence bungalow society?

[vishalrao]

Hello,

My residential society in Pune, which is of independent bungalow plots, is embarking on a beautification and modernisation drive and part of it is to move the overhead electricity wires underground. The plan is to also provide some sort of ducting or other facility for internet providers to use to lay fiber optic cabling.

Does anyone have any suggestions or contact information for implementing this, either the with the major private ISPs like Airtel, Jio or Tata Sky , or with someone like a dark fiber provider so that in the future if an internet can just plug and play their connections without having to again dig up or pull overhead wires?

Any pointers?

Thanks.

 

[shashankb]

The planning and finance come into play here. Either you have to buy the fibres and get them laid at your expense or ask an ISP for that. For an ISP to do a project, it should be luring for them. Like a minimum number of subscribers and stuff.

If you have 30 people in your society with independent homes, most of them should be on the same ISP for him to consider this. Again there should be cooperation of the Area manager of the ISP and Society

An ISP won't lay fibre if his service is not rented.

Another method:-- PVC water pipes can be laid without Fiber in them to each of the houses. Later those can be closed from both sides until a homeowner plans to use his pipe for an ISP. It makes it underground and also gets a good casing.
In case the owner plans to swap out ISP, either a new cable can be passed through that PVC pipe or the same one can be utilised.

Someone has to take care of all the pipe costs. You choose on getting all homes or just your home is up to you

 

[pillaicha]

Since it's a society, I'm assuming you've already had a few meetings regarding this. So on that assumption, I think you've all already reached the consensus to move all overhanging cables underground.

Everyone needs the Internet, along with TV and other services. I agree it's not as essential as electricity and water supply, due to cheap 4G being an option, but it won't be for long.

I've undertaken a project that did exactly what you've pictured. So here is my experience on it.

You need the following

• Ribbon Microduct
• Single mode single core fiber (unshielded)
• A good quality OLT (steer away from locked down ecosystems like Alphion)

Ribbon microduct is basically tiny ducts bonded together side to side. It is insanely easy to install compared to traditional PVC pipes, takes very little space, and makes blowing fiber through it very easy. My advice is to choose an alternative route for the underground OFC compared to your utility lines since it's very easy to damage fiber cables when utility companies dig up to do some work.

Rest is quite easy to understand I hope. Once the microduct is laid, and each house is connected to this, you may or may not blow fiber through it. Cost wise, it's not a lot of difference whether you blow Fibre to every house or leave it for later when residents subscribe. Buying the fiber cable in bulk, and blowing it to all houses in one go is so much cheaper than doing it in a staggered fashion.

Your OLT will need a UPS or an inverter or a solar setup. The choice is yours. It needs to be up 24x7. You need to associate yourself with all the local ISPs that are available and get everyone to lay their cables till your switch. So in short, from that switch --> OLT --> Houses is your domain, and the ISPs domain starts upstream of that switch. So the location of the switch and OLT needs to be such that the security guard of your society holds the key and can allow easy access to anyone who might require it.

Once the ISPs have terminated their connections on your switch, they mostly never need to visit even when a resident switches/subscribes to an ISP. This is because all that config is simply done on the switch and OLT by a designated network administrator from within your society: it can be you and maybe another person as backup, if you can learn to manage that switch and OLT. It's really easy.

 

[pillaicha]

Also to add to the above opinions of @shashankb , no ISP will do this project for you for free. They might ask you to have an exclusive tie up with them for 3 years or something like that to do this for your society. So make that choice carefully. If the society owns this last mile infrastructure, no single ISP gets a clout. Everyone is provided the infrastructure that is common, and they might pay you/your society's common fund, a small rental on a monthly basis depending on number of subscribers within the society.

No need to charge for terminating their connections at your switch. It makes more sense to charge them if you provide the last mile using your fiber infrastructure once a customer subscribes to an ISP. The whole thing can pay back dividends in a decade and is also future proof. Once you decide to upgrade to XG-PON, the fiber and ducts all stay in place. Simply upgrade the OLT and the ONT's..
Good luck!

 

[vishalrao]

Thank you guys for the inputs, very useful information 👍

I am also contacting a couple of so called dark fiber providers like Microscan and Dinesh Engineering to see if they will implement the ducting and switch OLT installation etc.

If anyone has any suggestions for such fiber deployment companies that support Pune that would help too.

I think we might be able to implement common infra in our society which any ISP can plug into but at the same time will consider giving exclusive access to an ISP to encourage them to start ASAP in our society.

 

[igloo]

I think Jio will be very much interested in doing this for free if you know the right person to contact.

 

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[vishalrao]

Yes, I think the first option is to let the ISP handle all the deployment with minimal effort from our society.

The next option of my society doing any ducting and switch OLT placement etc is just an alternative probably unlikely thing.

Let's see what happens in the coming days and weeks...