Re-use of BSNL underground optical fiber for connecting villages with FTTH

[pillaicha]

Cellular plans are cheap for now. Who is to say after 5 years it's going to be the same story?

Cellular prices will rise within two years. Not gradually, they'll rise steeply given the current rate of inflation in India. Go with FIBER whenever you get the chance to make some investment. It's future proof, can be used for multiple services at once... Air Fiber only makes sense and if you have 10-20 customers spread over 5kms in one sector.

 

[@Tx_JK]

On a similar note @shree_bn , ever checked for 4G carrier aggregation?
A 4CA can give 50 Mbps speed.
If you are a light user that is highly sufficient.
A 4000 rs half yearly plan with 5 GB data per day + 96 GB should be enough.
My own average daily usage is not more than 4 GB per day.
It will obviously be costlier than fiber in terms of plan. And as @pillaicha said, I can't guarantee long term economics of what is cheaper.
You can get a 4G carrier aggregated router and use it. There was actually a hotel nearby which had an antenna connected to a 4G router (This was 4 years ago). It was a public WiFi and it worked fine. Now probably they have upgraded to PM-Wani or local cable operator and the local cable operator is costly as hell.
I don't think they don't have BSNL fibre link.

 

[crashnburn_in]

You might want to research and look into how small US towns did their Fiber based ISPs when big ISPs were unwilling or too expensive.

That model when changed and customized for India could be a game changer.

 

[pillaicha]

That model won't work here because of two reasons

People still don't know why they would ever want/need fixed broadband. As long as mobiles are cheap, and 4G is cheap and widely available, there's no reason to ever want fixed broadband.

Which brings me to my second point, again economics. Fixed broadband needs capital investment initially. If the costs of the initial capital can't be justified to the people, they'll never cooperate to pitch in. They'll just say why spend so much when you can get 4G plan for a year for the cost of an ONT.

If the government wants to promote a national fiber infrastructure, along with the active promotion of BharatNet, they must set floor tarrifs for data services. Cheap data is only for one reason: accumulate customer market share. But the way Reliance is doing it for Jio can't be the case for any other telecom operator. This is why they complain that the playing field isn't level and they need floor tarrifs to atleast break even.