BSNL Partners With UTStarcom for FTTH Services in India

BEIJING --Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), a large, publicly owned telecommunications company in India, launched triple-play services over FTTH in late July using Gigabit EPON technology from UTStarcom Holdings. UTStarcom, a formerly U.S.-based vendor that recently relocated to China, has long been a supplier of broadband equipment to BSNL but has not previously supplied fiber-to-the-home equipment to the company.

BSNL has previously installed FTTH systems in nearly 134 cities across India and hopes to have around 6 million fiber customers by 2015. Earlier deployments were based on GPON technology from Alphion.

The new FTTH system, based on a self-healing fiber ring, can provide 2.56 Gbps downstream and 1.25 Gbps upstream.