That is very ambitious but i hope this can mean open access education can be delivered to the poorest of poor. Having 2-4 LED TVs with latest educational content directly streamed. The overworked teachers should become guides to the students.
That and the fact that the docsis networks here are so congested that it would make Internet quite unusable if strained (I use docsis and it’s a mess currently due to increased demand). I also think fiber has become cheap enough (the cabling) that the cost can be justified. Installing DSL and Docsis is not worth it given the high demand and future upgrades possible with fiber ...
However sometimes 'Active' (transitional?) Ethernet is used, which may cost more from a fibre perspective, but the gear at the end can then be traditional Ethernet which allows for taking advantage of economies of scale from the enterprise world:
It will likely be point to point optical networking (Ethernet/OTN) on these links. Once you get to the last mile, PON (probably GPON for now; XGS-PON is starting to come down in cost now, but is still probably 2x GPON generally).
Point to point kit is cheaper till you get to the customer-facing aggregation, at which point per-port cost of PON vs PtP is much more in PON's favour, and PON customer kit is very cheap from benefits of scale.
PON on the other hand isn't good for long range links. Even amplified (which is £££, and not normally sensible) it has quite a low range compared to point to point at the higher split ratios that make the cost of kit per user so attractive.
> Point to point kit is cheaper till you get to the customer-facing aggregation, at which point per-port cost of PON vs PtP is much more in PON's favour, and PON customer kit is very cheap from benefits of scale.
Is there a cross-over point when one becomes cheaper than the other? Total number of customers, customer per kilometre run, customer/population density, other?
> PON on the other hand isn't good for long range links.
There are certainly 'traditional' Ethernet AOM optics that can reach 40 and even 80 km (before getting into the long-haul stuff from the likes of Ciena), but given that most PONs seem to reach at least 20 km for not-outrageous splitter ratios (1:8 ~ 40km, 1:16 ~ 25-30km, 1:32 ~ 15-20km), how far does one actually need to go for most fibre runs?
A recent video on Utopia Fibre has them using AON, and they claim it ended up generally being cheaper:
While at it, they should also put up a pole every village (like electric pole) with high range WiFi router. This will remove the last 100m connectivity hurdle and everyone with a WiFi device can get a taste of high speed internet.
Many people in first world countries will. Some people in first world countries and probably most in Indian villages don't even have 4g yet. So I doubt that in 1000 days they will have 5g when we are barely producing any devices today with that capability.
The reason they don't have 4g now is mostly because there's no 4g service, not because people can't afford 4g enabled phones. I'm pretty sure by now 4g phones are just as cheap as 3g phones.
Detroit had the same problem with copper wiring in street lights until a few years ago, when they went LED and were able to reduce the size of the conductors and switch to aluminum, reducing the value of stripping them for scrap.
There is functioning aluminum wiring all over the place in america, still operational to this day. I just has problems with overheating and catching fire if the load is too big. If you know the load will never change...
No. The problem was in the 70s, with single strand solid conductors which were legal for only a few years due to fire hazards. Multi-strand aluminum is still used all the time. The single strand can work itself loose if installed quickly/without proper care due to expansion and contraction, it's not a concern for multi-strand. Single strand is also ok for a dedicated line to a single appliance / load, which is what these lights would be.
Oh, I know the feeling. In my hometown in Brazil they've installed these very tall LED poles with spikes because of thieves. People here will even steal your old thongs or plant vase if you leave them outside. It's insane.
The limiting factor is the client. Maximum transmission power is limited by law to avoid interference; routers generally hit the maximum - mine is doing 1 watt on the 5 GHz band and 200 mW on 2.4 GHz. But phones and laptops generally transmit at no more than a few dozen mW.
Transmission and reception have asymmetrical link speeds but your range is going be bounded by the point at which the client can't reliably talk back to the router to keep the connection alive.
Should we cancel NASA budget because there were homeless people?
Should we reduce public library budget because of people are suffering due to police brutality?
Every section of government is different with its own budget and goals, because a nation can move forward on all fronts.
Nobody is saying that providing clean water is not a priority.
Provide fast internet is just a new priority on table. it does not necessarily mean reducing priority for other items.
clean drinking water is a much more challenging problem. This is not merely the Govts. fault. People do not want to share existing water with other people and as economy is highly dependent on agriculture groundwater depletion is a serious issue. Most water in India (except Northern part) comes during the 4 months of monsoon. Large scale irrigation projects have a lot of environmental hurdles to overcome here unlike China yet quite a few of them are being worked on rapidly. Most of central India is a plateau and one ambitious plan involved pumping excess flood water in North India during monsoon onto the plateau and transporting it to the South. People are working on many different solutions to the problems as can be done practically.
> Large scale irrigation projects have a lot of environmental hurdles to overcome here unlike China
Which is a good thing in my opinion. These projects have to be scrutinized thread bare to ensure that they don't degrade the environment. Just look at what is happening in China with the Three Gorges Dam and the flooding of the Yangtze river. People who had land, houses on either side of the river are seeing lands washed away by these floods. Millions were evacuated. Such projects, though provide short term economic benefit, might end up harming the entire ecosystem around it.
I am not saying that you shouldn't do anything about it. Just that it should be done after careful scrutiny. We are not a dictatorship. That is both a boon and a curse. A curse because we can't be as fast as China is in taking decisions. But a boon because we do whatever we do with as much consensus as possible. By not negating stakeholders and by trying to bring as many of them as possible to the table.
Was going to say something along this line. Is disheartening to live in a first world country (center of Berlin) that happens to have the strongest economy in the Euro zone, and have such a slow internet that I can't even watch Netflix after 8 Pm (and having to pay 50 euro/month)
laughs in gigabit fiber for 10 euro/month in Eastern Europe
The reason why you're in this situation is that under Helmut Kohl, despite advice from experts to use fiber, the German government wired the whole country with copper instead because the ministry of infrastructure at the time had stocks in the copper business.[1]
And also, in present times, German politicians still don't see the value the internet brings to a country so it was never a priority.
Some even have employees print them pages off the internet so they can read them in paper form.
For them, the backbone of German economy is IG Metall factories so they never understand how could one ever make money with the internet.
As proof of this all one has to do is look at the DAX and see that none of the companies there bar SAP are software companies.
I see this as a mentality problem in German leadership, as it's only two big fintech companies, Wirecard and N26, are bombing hard while competitors from Sweden and the UK like Klarna and Monzo are flourishing. And I'm sure the engineers in Germany are just as good as the ones in Sweden and the UK.
> ..under Helmut Kohl, despite advice from experts to use fiber, the German government wired the whole country with copper instead because the ministry of infrastructure at the time had stocks in the copper business.
Such abuse of public position ought to be a criminal offence - they profited at the cost of setting the country back a decade (or more!) in terms of modern infrastructure.
Ubiquitous, fast, and maybe even free Internet - it seems logical and obvious that this is the ideal we should be moving towards, to benefit the whole country/world and future generations.
Just to name and shame, Christian Schwarz-Schilling was the minister of infrastructure at the time. Despite his actions and reputation, he never had to go to court and seems to be currently enjoying retirement.
If it’ll make you feel better, Maggie Thatcher killed-off the UK’s then-nationalised BT’s plans for nationwide FTTP in the late-1980s because it was anti-competitive to the nascent cablecos who were busy carving up our pavement (sidewalks) laying coax: https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost...
Seems like the UK was spared from the crappiness that is FTTP. Relying on ancient copper for the last 50-300 meters sucks, and the issues that plagued ADSL are still present.
It's not just copper vs fiber though: by the time of reunification West Germany was already mostly done with the transition from cheap overhead wiring to the luxury of invisible (and storm-proof) underground cables. A return to putting up poles would have felt like the cliche of a failing businessman telling his trophy wife that they can't afford the country club membership anymore. Its much harder to give up an expensive habit than to never start.
I'm sure that there are "underground wiring" countries with widespread fiber deployment and that Germany is doing worse than those, but comparisons to places where overhead is still accepted are skewed.
Not much, pay the talents the right amount of money, make it easy for Startups, invest in European technologies and also produce them here, slim down the bureaucracy and the taxes for startups/spinoffs.
I agree with alot of those reasons, but Everywhere, People at startups earn less and work harder, for having an option of growth: stocks, job advancement, possibly better skills, etc.
India is going to overtake China in population by 2022, and the Indian population pyramid is lagging China's by 30-40 years.
This is going to be a very interesting time when China overtakes the US in the nominal size of GDP, only to have India start doing what China did to the US before it even happens.
We might be looking at the 30 Chinese years instead of the Chinese century.
I am actually surprised that India has a big and competitive enough optical fiber industry that exports to China for China to raise punitive anti-dumping tariffs.
Fibre is relatively low tech compared to Fabs and chip industry. Perhaps it is a function of raw material costs ?
While compared to western standards Chinese labour remains cheap, it is expensive compared to East Asia and India who are poorer than China and have less purchasing power.
As per article "1.5 lakh gram panchayats in the country have been connected with optical fiber". Each gram panchayats consists from 1 to 10 village. Average may be 4. So now we are talking about branching out the Gram-Panchayat connection to all villages under it's adminnistration. Totally doable. Of course there are still some remote villages/panchayats without Fiber.
2nd important point is monetization model, because these thing require maintenance. Private telecom players have mostly given up to participate in this Bharat-Net connectivity scheme. They seem to prefer their own Microwave backhaul for village cluster. That leaves National Telecom Operator BSNL which is not really in good financial shape.
Have seen about 10 miles done in a day. How? By piggybacking on already lined 10Kv lines. About 1 meter under the lines put a galvanized steel bracket on each concrete pole and go. 3 people in one day laid 10 miles. If they had to put their own poles would have delayed but by a little. So it's doable and in countries like India, labor is virtually free and rules /permits are nonexistent so costs are low.
Edit: India will become a superpower. It will not happen in a day or 1000 but with our (US) help they will, and will keep China in check.
Step 1 is to stop emigrating from India to the US the moment you get a chance. I'm guilty of it as are many of my friends but it doesn't help develop a country when their brightest minds don't have enough faith to stay.
> As an Indian, I've heard countless plans like these every few years
I agree the previous Governments never did act on their plans. I find a lot of difference between them and the current Government when it comes to desire, commitment and execution. Take Highways for instance. Rapid construction across the country. In 2014, when Modi came to power, it was 4260 km per year. In 2018, 10800 kms of highways were built. Almost 2.5x. In 2020 the Government has set a target of 60 km per day which is 21900 km which it is already on the path of achieving. One thing cannot be denied is that this Government is pushing all boundaries possible to get India on track. Yes it fails in some (demonetization) and wins in most but at least there is no policy paralysis like in the UPA era.
I have backpacked through one of the regions where some of the construction you are talking about is going on. In one of the Himalayan states, one of their ambitious highway projects has caused destruction with little benefit to the local populace and far negative consequences to the terrain and environment. Pursuing development is good but it shouldn't come at the cost of destroying your ecology and environment, specially the fragile ones.
So I would hold my judgement on the effectiveness and vision of the current establishment.
I tried searching for the issues once I came back but I was surprised how less effort was given in the country's English media to cover this. With the amount of publications that seemingly are there, I would have assumed this to be covered extensively and researched.
I would add that I am not against the improvement in connectivity, the Himalayas are beautiful. There are far better ways to improve connectivity which keeps the beauty of the areas preserved. It would have taken more time and money but the dividends would have been more.
I will leave some blog posts I found on the issue for reference; hopefully someone acts on this horrific "development" going on.
Again that’s from standing next to a highway, try and work out the percentage of land being covered by highways in that region. They are highlighted on maps and travelers tend to spend a lot of time on them, but they don’t actually cover that much surface area compared to local roads, houses, etc.
Sure, the area of highways is less but the impact is not localised. If you see the articles that I had quoted in my original comment, two of them mention impacts which bubble up to other areas as well.
Also, it is not necessary that even
area around highways has to be an eyesore/badly degraded. Mountainous roads are some of the most beautiful paths to travel on and there are plenty of examples where construction has happened keeping that in perspective.
I am not disputing that there might be some bad ecological impact of road construction projects. I bet such issues exist in every part of the World where development is taking place. Here is a list of all the Highway revolts that took place in United States alone for various environmental violations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts_in_the_United_...
The numbers are staggering in comparison to what violations happen in India. But still I am not justifying it by saying that it should continue to happen. I am just saying that these issues exist everywhere and there is no point singling out India for this. And those 20,000+ kms highways are not built in Himalayas alone but in the entire Country. But yes, I understand and share your concern that ecology must not be affected for any project whatsoever and will 100% support you on that point. I just wish that people take things holistically when it comes to any project that happens in India in the same way you would take projects that happen in your own countries. After all, India has to develop and for that to happen you have to clear out land, build roads, construct buildings, dams etc. It can't happen on virgin soil. Something has to be removed for the development to happen. Isn't it? If you have an alternate way of going about it please suggest.
I apologize if it looked like I was singling it out, my intention was to just point out that not all construction might be something to feel happy about; some of it should definitely be questioned.
Regarding the US example, since most of the freeway construction in US happened long time back. A lot of these oppositions are old, we are now much more aware about the human impact to ecology. Also, isn't it better to learn and not repeat the mistakes of even others.
These kinds of comments show the paradox of the modern urban professional. The ones who have reached the top 1-2% in terms of educational achievement and career prospects.
They live in cities or remote locations with full amenities - car, electricity and internet, smartphones, laptops. They use apps powered by the global internet and consume from the global supply chain. And they hike in the Himalayas with their DSLR, patagonia/north face gear and post the snaps to instagram.
They just want to freeze the state of development, fossil fuel usage, roads, etc. Because they see no benefit to themselves of any more of those things. Everything is swell for them.
This denies the benefits of development to the hundreds of millions who still need access to education, health care and economic opportunities.
There is NO country in the world that has reached first world status without going through development. I am sure you think there is a way but it is just one way to deny the poor of benefits. There is no widespread environmental destruction. Every measure forest cover, pollution, habitat has improved over the past decades.
Just because things are great for you is not an excuse to unintentionally wage class warfare.
Wow, that's a loaded comment that makes a lot of assumptions about me.
I am not against connectivity or improving the life of people there, a lot of these areas are already connected by metalled road. What was happening when I was traveling there was widening of the roads indiscriminately, if you talk to people there or even read some of the articles I have linked, there isn't much benefit that local people are seeing because of this. There are far more important things that would have been beneficial to people living there like education, healthcare and some of them can be improved drastically with something as simple as improving LTE coverage.
All I am saying is, I would have preferred to see the myriad of problems associated with the project addressed, I am not saying do not build, but build sustainably.
About the metrics you think that haven't degraded, I don't have sources ready on all of them but I just looked up forest cover and one of the most green regions is now covered with plantations a lot. [1] Plantation cover != Forest cover.
Lastly, just because I am wearing Patagonia/North Face because of their environmental commitments, doesn't mean I expect everyone else to do the same. There are other paths, which might not be perfect but will be better, it doesn't hurt to raise issues when you see them so you can explore those paths. The choice is not binary.
What was happening when I was traveling there was widening of the roads indiscriminately
Surely you know better than the urban planners and the engineers who are widening roads indiscriminately.
or
there isn't much benefit that local people are seeing because of this.
How long did you wait before you polled the locals for benefits? What timeline in your opinion is valid for benefits to accrue - 1 year? 3 years?
Apologies if it came across as harsh but I do appreciate your comment. I used your comment as a template for the general environmentalist anathema in third-world nations like India against development which disproportionately helps the poor. The upper socio-economic classes everywhere are against further development be it the home owners of SF who rail against high density housing, the mansion owners of nantucket who hate off shore windmills, the woke classes of Mumbai who protest the cutting of 300 trees to stop development of a metro line which will disproportionately help the mass-transit commuting poor.
Sustainability - that vague bogey of the anti-development movement. Oft used but never defined.
I am not too different than you. I would love the earth to be pristine so when I visit distant locales I can enjoy untouched panoramas. I just value the quality of the life of the locals more than my view.
> Surely you know better than the urban planners and the engineers who are widening roads indiscriminately.
When I used the word indiscriminate, there was a specific purpose to it. It doesn't have to be that the engineers or planners don't know the better way to do it. It just might be that they choose to pick the cheapest way they can get away with, or do you deny that in developing countries corruption is not high and implementation of laws is not lax.
I have specifically mentioned examples in one of the other replies of things that they have done indiscriminately. Filling up narrow valleys with debris or destroying vegetation below the road slope by just leaving the debris there certainly isn't smart; nor is cutting slopes in the cheapest way to leave them prone to landslides.
There are ways to activley manage it which have been employed throughout the world.
As I said, even when I had searched in the past the media coverage on this was poor which is surprising. But here are few links which discuss the issues I mentioned in the comment.
It just might be that they choose to pick the cheapest way they can get away with,
Of course you know the most optimal trade-off between costs, quality and the environment not folks who are building thousands of miles of roadway every year.
do you deny that in developing countries corruption is not high and implementation of laws is not lax.
Straw man. There is corruption everywhere even in the west. Because there is corruption, nothing should happen.
Filling up narrow valleys with debris or destroying vegetation below the road slope by just leaving the debris there certainly isn't smart; nor is cutting slopes in the cheapest way to leave them prone to landslides.
You know a better way? How do you know dumping it in the valley below is worse than carting it off and dumping it in a remote valley. Do you have data showing where it should be dumped? Have you talked to any transportation engineers. Let me allow that it is worse and causes landslides. Are those landslides worse than having wider safer roads?
Your arguments have too much innuendo, conjecture because you have an defacto ideological position. You are fundamentally opposed to all development as it no longer serves your needs.
It seems futile to discuss this with you. All you have done is, counter arguments with counter questions while never addressing the issue. I chose to reply once hoping that it would be constructive, but it isn't.
If all both of us are going to do is counter questions with more questions and just refute the arguments entirely by questioning the other person's knowledge and research boosted by our own biases just to prove oneself right, the whole discussion becomes a non sequitur. For instance, you don't even know the dumping this is something an actual engineer working there told me about, the decision wasn't upto him, alas. You see, while backpacking one thing I make a point to do is to talk to locals.
Additionally, the landslide vs road widening argument. Things are not binary in real world, it is not like one has to exist at the cost of other.
While accusing me for having an ideological position which you know nothing about, you are conveniently ignoring yours. In no way, I have opposed "development" anywhere in the thread, it should definitely be at balance with other things and definitely not indiscriminate like I saw.
While that juices the numbers conveniently, aren't the vast majority of India's roads still two-lane? And as the article notes, building 4 lanes costs more than twice the price building two lanes.
Yeah, I've no problem with the measure itself, but so far I haven't seen accurate comparisons across governments that normalise these figures. Neither from the government nor the pliant media.
The vast majority of Indians live in a media bubble.
Unless you are talking about legacy roads where coverage was more important. All current highways and expressways are multilane and built according to international standards.
> In 2018, the definition of length was changed to count each lane separately.[1]
Did you actually read the article? It was changed to meet International Standards on how lanes are measured. What is wrong with it?
The old numbers were revised to the new definition too. It doesn't change the facts.
Just because the old Governments weren't following International Standards doesn't mean the new Government continues to do the same. This is actually more transparent as we know exactly what is the cost needed to build 1 lane of a highway as opposed to masking the actual costs by saying 1 lane actually equals 2 or 4 lanes.
As another commenter mentioned, they changed the definition of how highway lengths are calculated.
Stunts like these is what makes me sceptical of government claims (being sceptical of governments, imo, is necessary for democracy). You have to read the fine print of every statistic.
I agree that there is no more policy paralysis. But I will also say that there is a lack of follow through of initial plans. This government is a lot like a new entrepreneur - you have tons of great new ideas and lots of energy. But you keep trying out new ideas instead of focusing on one single thing.
The government needs to pick one agenda and go all out on it. I hopeful that they'll see the pandemic as an opportunity to push local manufacturing and will go all out on it.
Only thing great about the current Indian government is their PR.
BharatNet was launched on 25 October 2011 (previous government), to connect all the villages in India through Optical Fibre network. The deadline for the completion has extended several times and the last deadline was March 2020. By today's announcement, the deadline is extended by 3 more years!
True. In 2016 Smart City mission was heavily promoted and 100 cities won the rights. Not a single one has been developed in 5 years.
My parents live in a planned newly built (< 10 years) area of a major city and they don't have either fibre or telephone cable. Internet is by very poor 4G. Recently a private fibre has started.
How do you build 100 Smart Cities in 5 years? That is practically impossible to do. The mission itself spans over 2 decades. The 5 years is for finalization of the selection of cities and then planning. 20 were selected in 2016, and the rest in 2018. You are confusing this timeline with the entire Mission timeline which isn't 5 years by any stretch of imagination.
All of these Smart Cities are built in phases. First would be industrial townships followed by residential development. You can't build 100 Smart Cities in just 5 years. Even the Mission itself states that the results will be visible from 2022 onwards. We are still in 2020.
The budget for the entire project was just way too low. The Center allots 500cr for each smart city, matched by 500cr by the state. When you're dealing with city-wide infrastructure, this much money goes away very quickly
Comments like this should not be allowed on HN, they add nothing to the discussion. If there is specific critique about a particular minister, department, project (or just about anything specific than a generic "government"), that's more valuable to read.
> Comments like these give proper context to foreigner like me who don't know how inclined the Indian government is to follow through on their promises
You do realize that India is a Democracy and that there is no one "Indian Government" but successive Governments that set their own policies right? Just because it was the case some 10 years ago doesn't mean it will continue to be so in the present or the future. Governments change. Policies change. That is Democracy for you. What promises are made by the Government to the people, if not kept, will be voted out.
That there is not a culture of following through on promises like these. That doesn't mean that they won't this time, but it also means that I shouldn't be surprised if they don't.
> You do realize that India is a Democracy and that there is no one "Indian Government" but successive Governments that set their own policies right
In systems like India (and my own country, Canada), we re-use the word government to mean two different things. One is the entity which controls the state, which is constant over elections, and the other is the group of people currently in charge, which frequently changes with elections. I was using the former usage.
I get where you are coming from, but the original comment gets old very fast. A government not fulfilling its promises is something very common across most developing countries in most situations. After the first couple of occurrences, it just promotes low effort comments instead of nuanced discussions. Check out places like r/India or other forums online, and see the difference in quality of discussion versus HN (on topics which are native to western countries) to get example of impact of the low-effort comments.
It should have been done a long ago. Wasn't the first five years enough for the Modi govt. Undoubtedly, Modi has done a numerous good things, he failed to ensure a better internet connectivity. Had it not been Jio we would have been in a big trouble.
Few days back my brother-in-law happily announced that Jio Fiber has reached their homes and that I can visit my home-town and stay longer without swearing about the Internet "availability". For context, I'm from Manipur[1], a pretty remote corner at the extreme north-east corner of India.
Earlier, I was consulting with a friend who owns a part of an ISP there. I wanted to pull a fiber all the way home and setup station there I can replicate work (and school for the kids) and actually be able to work from there. Now, I've asked my brother-in-law to get any plan possible. When I go back there, I'm going to just carry a whole bunch of equipments to wire and wi-fi the whole home. The homes there are really massive and few stories, so this is going to be fun.
That's so heartening to hear! I had friends from Assam who were similarly disappointed by the broadband coverage there, and had planned doing something about it, but the problem was too hard to solve unless you had deep pockets. It's great to see Government doing it instead of leaving it up to private operators.
Additionally, the recent announcement of laying Fiber cables to the Andaman and Nicobar islands is another good thing - I don't remember anybody talking any policy related points about the remote islands ever. Note: Andaman is far from Indian mainland (1200km) - about as far as New York is from Georgia, and it's closer to Myanmar (100km). It has a paltry population of only 300,000, spread across scores of islands.
Current government only wants more people to have internet, so that they can spread their toxic religious nationalist propoganda. Also spreading more misinformation. Mob lynchings are going to increase with all the WhatsApp news riling up the Go-Rakshaks (cow defenders). And more.
All the misinformation and lies to help the goverment win another term.
Yes. You missed the agenda when every village was connected had a phone and the Govt laid down infrastructure for it or when they erected TV towers across length and breadth of country in 80s.
Current Prime Minister Modi was in the ad of "Jio" company which was aired in national tv channels after he got elected. That company funds the BJP party to which Modi belong. By giving the money to "Jio", the money is being routed back to the party in the form of donations. By the way in India the party does not have legal obligation to show where the money comes from or how much. The BJP party is just a product of religious group called the RSS which wants the society to be based on strict vedic hindu religion. Vedas advocate the society to be 4 level hierarchy with priest's (Brahmins) at the top of the hierarchy and believe that education must be restricted only to the priest's for the good of the society. Not surprisingly majority of RSS members at the top level are Brahmins. India was a vedic society prior to the british colonization. This is the reason majority of the indians are 1st generation college graduates even though they were rich and owned a lot of land.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 170 ms ] threadMost of these types of deployments tend to go with a GPON variant, with passive optical splitters:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_optical_network
However sometimes 'Active' (transitional?) Ethernet is used, which may cost more from a fibre perspective, but the gear at the end can then be traditional Ethernet which allows for taking advantage of economies of scale from the enterprise world:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Telecommunication_Open_In...
Have any details been released on what they're going to use? Anyone have experience with running PON that could comment on the pros/cons?
Point to point kit is cheaper till you get to the customer-facing aggregation, at which point per-port cost of PON vs PtP is much more in PON's favour, and PON customer kit is very cheap from benefits of scale.
PON on the other hand isn't good for long range links. Even amplified (which is £££, and not normally sensible) it has quite a low range compared to point to point at the higher split ratios that make the cost of kit per user so attractive.
Is there a cross-over point when one becomes cheaper than the other? Total number of customers, customer per kilometre run, customer/population density, other?
> PON on the other hand isn't good for long range links.
There are certainly 'traditional' Ethernet AOM optics that can reach 40 and even 80 km (before getting into the long-haul stuff from the likes of Ciena), but given that most PONs seem to reach at least 20 km for not-outrageous splitter ratios (1:8 ~ 40km, 1:16 ~ 25-30km, 1:32 ~ 15-20km), how far does one actually need to go for most fibre runs?
A recent video on Utopia Fibre has them using AON, and they claim it ended up generally being cheaper:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e9DNwInTE4
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Telecommunication_Open_In...
People will still the WiFi device and sell it for pennies. They don't spare road light in many parts of cities.
1000 days if substantially shorter than the lifecycle of phone models. New cheap phones today don't have 5g, you see the timing issue?
The limiting factor is the client. Maximum transmission power is limited by law to avoid interference; routers generally hit the maximum - mine is doing 1 watt on the 5 GHz band and 200 mW on 2.4 GHz. But phones and laptops generally transmit at no more than a few dozen mW.
Transmission and reception have asymmetrical link speeds but your range is going be bounded by the point at which the client can't reliably talk back to the router to keep the connection alive.
what about villages that already have access to water, should they wait for other things until all villages catchup ?
imagine access to youtube & vast knowledge, may be it will spur the commom folk to take matter into their own hands and improve their lives.
It would be more appropriate to broaden the scale and raise this question in relation to the whole world, not just the other villages.
Should we cancel NASA budget because there were homeless people? Should we reduce public library budget because of people are suffering due to police brutality?
Every section of government is different with its own budget and goals, because a nation can move forward on all fronts.
Nobody is saying that providing clean water is not a priority. Provide fast internet is just a new priority on table. it does not necessarily mean reducing priority for other items.
https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-die-due-to-hunger-in-I...
Which is a good thing in my opinion. These projects have to be scrutinized thread bare to ensure that they don't degrade the environment. Just look at what is happening in China with the Three Gorges Dam and the flooding of the Yangtze river. People who had land, houses on either side of the river are seeing lands washed away by these floods. Millions were evacuated. Such projects, though provide short term economic benefit, might end up harming the entire ecosystem around it.
I am not saying that you shouldn't do anything about it. Just that it should be done after careful scrutiny. We are not a dictatorship. That is both a boon and a curse. A curse because we can't be as fast as China is in taking decisions. But a boon because we do whatever we do with as much consensus as possible. By not negating stakeholders and by trying to bring as many of them as possible to the table.
dashboard: https://ejalshakti.gov.in/WaterDashboard/HouseHoldConnection...
The reason why you're in this situation is that under Helmut Kohl, despite advice from experts to use fiber, the German government wired the whole country with copper instead because the ministry of infrastructure at the time had stocks in the copper business.[1]
And also, in present times, German politicians still don't see the value the internet brings to a country so it was never a priority. Some even have employees print them pages off the internet so they can read them in paper form.
For them, the backbone of German economy is IG Metall factories so they never understand how could one ever make money with the internet.
As proof of this all one has to do is look at the DAX and see that none of the companies there bar SAP are software companies.
I see this as a mentality problem in German leadership, as it's only two big fintech companies, Wirecard and N26, are bombing hard while competitors from Sweden and the UK like Klarna and Monzo are flourishing. And I'm sure the engineers in Germany are just as good as the ones in Sweden and the UK.
[1]https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/deutschland-warum-unsere...
Such abuse of public position ought to be a criminal offence - they profited at the cost of setting the country back a decade (or more!) in terms of modern infrastructure.
Ubiquitous, fast, and maybe even free Internet - it seems logical and obvious that this is the ideal we should be moving towards, to benefit the whole country/world and future generations.
I'm sure that there are "underground wiring" countries with widespread fiber deployment and that Germany is doing worse than those, but comparisons to places where overhead is still accepted are skewed.
How is the situation in Germany different ?
It's the opposite of what i wrote (eg massive bureaucracy, "normal" taxes) ;)
This is going to be a very interesting time when China overtakes the US in the nominal size of GDP, only to have India start doing what China did to the US before it even happens.
We might be looking at the 30 Chinese years instead of the Chinese century.
While compared to western standards Chinese labour remains cheap, it is expensive compared to East Asia and India who are poorer than China and have less purchasing power.
2nd important point is monetization model, because these thing require maintenance. Private telecom players have mostly given up to participate in this Bharat-Net connectivity scheme. They seem to prefer their own Microwave backhaul for village cluster. That leaves National Telecom Operator BSNL which is not really in good financial shape.
Still I believe this is doable.
Edit: India will become a superpower. It will not happen in a day or 1000 but with our (US) help they will, and will keep China in check.
I agree the previous Governments never did act on their plans. I find a lot of difference between them and the current Government when it comes to desire, commitment and execution. Take Highways for instance. Rapid construction across the country. In 2014, when Modi came to power, it was 4260 km per year. In 2018, 10800 kms of highways were built. Almost 2.5x. In 2020 the Government has set a target of 60 km per day which is 21900 km which it is already on the path of achieving. One thing cannot be denied is that this Government is pushing all boundaries possible to get India on track. Yes it fails in some (demonetization) and wins in most but at least there is no policy paralysis like in the UPA era.
This is OP's personal perception and opinion of the current and the former government.
So I would hold my judgement on the effectiveness and vision of the current establishment.
I tried searching for the issues once I came back but I was surprised how less effort was given in the country's English media to cover this. With the amount of publications that seemingly are there, I would have assumed this to be covered extensively and researched.
I would add that I am not against the improvement in connectivity, the Himalayas are beautiful. There are far better ways to improve connectivity which keeps the beauty of the areas preserved. It would have taken more time and money but the dividends would have been more.
I will leave some blog posts I found on the issue for reference; hopefully someone acts on this horrific "development" going on.
[1] https://indiaclimatedialogue.net/2018/09/24/highway-project-... [2]https://sandrp.in/2020/02/24/uttarakhand-road-widening-work-... [3] https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/sc...
- inconsiderate cutting/blasting in landslide prone areas.
- destruction of vegetation by throwing away the waste/debris from the cutting/blasting downhill which covers the slope. [1]
- non disposal of the same waste impacting river flow paths and debris narrowing the river bed
There are far more issues relating to local population and ecology which have been documented.
[1] I have photos of my own but this also represents the conditions there quite well. https://images.firstpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/naal...
Also, it is not necessary that even area around highways has to be an eyesore/badly degraded. Mountainous roads are some of the most beautiful paths to travel on and there are plenty of examples where construction has happened keeping that in perspective.
The numbers are staggering in comparison to what violations happen in India. But still I am not justifying it by saying that it should continue to happen. I am just saying that these issues exist everywhere and there is no point singling out India for this. And those 20,000+ kms highways are not built in Himalayas alone but in the entire Country. But yes, I understand and share your concern that ecology must not be affected for any project whatsoever and will 100% support you on that point. I just wish that people take things holistically when it comes to any project that happens in India in the same way you would take projects that happen in your own countries. After all, India has to develop and for that to happen you have to clear out land, build roads, construct buildings, dams etc. It can't happen on virgin soil. Something has to be removed for the development to happen. Isn't it? If you have an alternate way of going about it please suggest.
Regarding the US example, since most of the freeway construction in US happened long time back. A lot of these oppositions are old, we are now much more aware about the human impact to ecology. Also, isn't it better to learn and not repeat the mistakes of even others.
They live in cities or remote locations with full amenities - car, electricity and internet, smartphones, laptops. They use apps powered by the global internet and consume from the global supply chain. And they hike in the Himalayas with their DSLR, patagonia/north face gear and post the snaps to instagram.
They just want to freeze the state of development, fossil fuel usage, roads, etc. Because they see no benefit to themselves of any more of those things. Everything is swell for them.
This denies the benefits of development to the hundreds of millions who still need access to education, health care and economic opportunities.
There is NO country in the world that has reached first world status without going through development. I am sure you think there is a way but it is just one way to deny the poor of benefits. There is no widespread environmental destruction. Every measure forest cover, pollution, habitat has improved over the past decades.
Just because things are great for you is not an excuse to unintentionally wage class warfare.
I am not against connectivity or improving the life of people there, a lot of these areas are already connected by metalled road. What was happening when I was traveling there was widening of the roads indiscriminately, if you talk to people there or even read some of the articles I have linked, there isn't much benefit that local people are seeing because of this. There are far more important things that would have been beneficial to people living there like education, healthcare and some of them can be improved drastically with something as simple as improving LTE coverage.
All I am saying is, I would have preferred to see the myriad of problems associated with the project addressed, I am not saying do not build, but build sustainably.
About the metrics you think that haven't degraded, I don't have sources ready on all of them but I just looked up forest cover and one of the most green regions is now covered with plantations a lot. [1] Plantation cover != Forest cover.
Lastly, just because I am wearing Patagonia/North Face because of their environmental commitments, doesn't mean I expect everyone else to do the same. There are other paths, which might not be perfect but will be better, it doesn't hurt to raise issues when you see them so you can explore those paths. The choice is not binary.
[1] https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.am...
What was happening when I was traveling there was widening of the roads indiscriminately
Surely you know better than the urban planners and the engineers who are widening roads indiscriminately.
or
there isn't much benefit that local people are seeing because of this.
How long did you wait before you polled the locals for benefits? What timeline in your opinion is valid for benefits to accrue - 1 year? 3 years?
Apologies if it came across as harsh but I do appreciate your comment. I used your comment as a template for the general environmentalist anathema in third-world nations like India against development which disproportionately helps the poor. The upper socio-economic classes everywhere are against further development be it the home owners of SF who rail against high density housing, the mansion owners of nantucket who hate off shore windmills, the woke classes of Mumbai who protest the cutting of 300 trees to stop development of a metro line which will disproportionately help the mass-transit commuting poor.
Sustainability - that vague bogey of the anti-development movement. Oft used but never defined.
I am not too different than you. I would love the earth to be pristine so when I visit distant locales I can enjoy untouched panoramas. I just value the quality of the life of the locals more than my view.
When I used the word indiscriminate, there was a specific purpose to it. It doesn't have to be that the engineers or planners don't know the better way to do it. It just might be that they choose to pick the cheapest way they can get away with, or do you deny that in developing countries corruption is not high and implementation of laws is not lax.
I have specifically mentioned examples in one of the other replies of things that they have done indiscriminately. Filling up narrow valleys with debris or destroying vegetation below the road slope by just leaving the debris there certainly isn't smart; nor is cutting slopes in the cheapest way to leave them prone to landslides.
There are ways to activley manage it which have been employed throughout the world.
As I said, even when I had searched in the past the media coverage on this was poor which is surprising. But here are few links which discuss the issues I mentioned in the comment.
- https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/jul/21/char-dha...
- https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/environment/char-dham-na...
It just might be that they choose to pick the cheapest way they can get away with,
Of course you know the most optimal trade-off between costs, quality and the environment not folks who are building thousands of miles of roadway every year.
do you deny that in developing countries corruption is not high and implementation of laws is not lax.
Straw man. There is corruption everywhere even in the west. Because there is corruption, nothing should happen.
Filling up narrow valleys with debris or destroying vegetation below the road slope by just leaving the debris there certainly isn't smart; nor is cutting slopes in the cheapest way to leave them prone to landslides.
You know a better way? How do you know dumping it in the valley below is worse than carting it off and dumping it in a remote valley. Do you have data showing where it should be dumped? Have you talked to any transportation engineers. Let me allow that it is worse and causes landslides. Are those landslides worse than having wider safer roads?
Your arguments have too much innuendo, conjecture because you have an defacto ideological position. You are fundamentally opposed to all development as it no longer serves your needs.
Just ponder that.
If all both of us are going to do is counter questions with more questions and just refute the arguments entirely by questioning the other person's knowledge and research boosted by our own biases just to prove oneself right, the whole discussion becomes a non sequitur. For instance, you don't even know the dumping this is something an actual engineer working there told me about, the decision wasn't upto him, alas. You see, while backpacking one thing I make a point to do is to talk to locals.
Additionally, the landslide vs road widening argument. Things are not binary in real world, it is not like one has to exist at the cost of other.
While accusing me for having an ideological position which you know nothing about, you are conveniently ignoring yours. In no way, I have opposed "development" anywhere in the thread, it should definitely be at balance with other things and definitely not indiscriminate like I saw.
In 2019, the govt stopped building highways at the first sign of economic distress.[2]
1: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/now-new-concept-to...
2: https://www.livemint.com/industry/infrastructure/pmo-s-sugge...
The vast majority of Indians live in a media bubble.
Did you actually read the article? It was changed to meet International Standards on how lanes are measured. What is wrong with it?
The old numbers were revised to the new definition too. It doesn't change the facts.
Just because the old Governments weren't following International Standards doesn't mean the new Government continues to do the same. This is actually more transparent as we know exactly what is the cost needed to build 1 lane of a highway as opposed to masking the actual costs by saying 1 lane actually equals 2 or 4 lanes.
I've no problem with the measure itself, but all comparisons are misleading.
Stunts like these is what makes me sceptical of government claims (being sceptical of governments, imo, is necessary for democracy). You have to read the fine print of every statistic.
I agree that there is no more policy paralysis. But I will also say that there is a lack of follow through of initial plans. This government is a lot like a new entrepreneur - you have tons of great new ideas and lots of energy. But you keep trying out new ideas instead of focusing on one single thing.
The government needs to pick one agenda and go all out on it. I hopeful that they'll see the pandemic as an opportunity to push local manufacturing and will go all out on it.
My parents live in a planned newly built (< 10 years) area of a major city and they don't have either fibre or telephone cable. Internet is by very poor 4G. Recently a private fibre has started.
How do you build 100 Smart Cities in 5 years? That is practically impossible to do. The mission itself spans over 2 decades. The 5 years is for finalization of the selection of cities and then planning. 20 were selected in 2016, and the rest in 2018. You are confusing this timeline with the entire Mission timeline which isn't 5 years by any stretch of imagination.
> Not a single one has been developed in 5 years.
AURIC is the first one to be completed. You can read more about it here: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/aurangabad/indias-f...
All of these Smart Cities are built in phases. First would be industrial townships followed by residential development. You can't build 100 Smart Cities in just 5 years. Even the Mission itself states that the results will be visible from 2022 onwards. We are still in 2020.
> Comments like these give proper context to foreigner like me who don't know how inclined the Indian government is to follow through on their promises
You do realize that India is a Democracy and that there is no one "Indian Government" but successive Governments that set their own policies right? Just because it was the case some 10 years ago doesn't mean it will continue to be so in the present or the future. Governments change. Policies change. That is Democracy for you. What promises are made by the Government to the people, if not kept, will be voted out.
That there is not a culture of following through on promises like these. That doesn't mean that they won't this time, but it also means that I shouldn't be surprised if they don't.
> You do realize that India is a Democracy and that there is no one "Indian Government" but successive Governments that set their own policies right
In systems like India (and my own country, Canada), we re-use the word government to mean two different things. One is the entity which controls the state, which is constant over elections, and the other is the group of people currently in charge, which frequently changes with elections. I was using the former usage.
Few years ago, there was a big hoopla about making India superpower by 2020. We all know where that is.
Few days back my brother-in-law happily announced that Jio Fiber has reached their homes and that I can visit my home-town and stay longer without swearing about the Internet "availability". For context, I'm from Manipur[1], a pretty remote corner at the extreme north-east corner of India.
Earlier, I was consulting with a friend who owns a part of an ISP there. I wanted to pull a fiber all the way home and setup station there I can replicate work (and school for the kids) and actually be able to work from there. Now, I've asked my brother-in-law to get any plan possible. When I go back there, I'm going to just carry a whole bunch of equipments to wire and wi-fi the whole home. The homes there are really massive and few stories, so this is going to be fun.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manipur
Additionally, the recent announcement of laying Fiber cables to the Andaman and Nicobar islands is another good thing - I don't remember anybody talking any policy related points about the remote islands ever. Note: Andaman is far from Indian mainland (1200km) - about as far as New York is from Georgia, and it's closer to Myanmar (100km). It has a paltry population of only 300,000, spread across scores of islands.
Also, in many of the comments there seems to be a seamless conflation between business and government.
All the misinformation and lies to help the goverment win another term.