BBNL and Dark Fibre | 12 Feb 2020
Why in News
Three major telecom service providers, Reliance Jio Infocomm, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, have approached the state-run Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) to use its dark fibre. It will help the telecom service providers to cut down on their capital expenditure.
- The unused infrastructure of BBNL will be used to expand the presence in rural India and offer 4G as well as other long-term evolution (LTE) mobile telephony services.
Dark fibre
- It is an unused optical fibre that has been laid but is not currently being used in fibre-optic communications. Since fibre-optic cable transmits information in the form of light pulses, a "dark" cable refers to one through which light pulses are not being transmitted.
- Companies lay extra optical fibres in order to avoid cost repetition when more bandwidth is needed.
- It is also known as unlit fibre.
Bharat Broadband Network Limited
- It is a Special Purpose Vehicle set up by the Government of India under the Companies Act, 1956 with an authorized capital of ₹1000 crore.
- It comes under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
- In 2011, it was mandated to create the National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN) in India which was later renamed as the BharatNet project in 2015.