 "Sterlite bags order worth Rs 2,450 crore")
The company today said it has received a purchase order form Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) for end-to-end deployment including design, engineering, implementation and maintenance of a part of Network for Spectrum (NFS) project. The total contract size of the deal is Rs 500 crore.
It also signed up with Jammu & Kashmir to lay an optical fiber cable (OFC) network in the state. The size of which is expected to be around Rs 1,950 crore.
The company is a major partner in creating the OFC networks in other regions in the country as a part of NFS rollout, countrywide.
“J&K is one of India’s most sensitive areas in all aspects of national interest. We have recently been awarded a project to establish a power transmission infrastructure in J&K under NRSS 29. We are happy that our capabilities of creating end-to-end infrastructures in Power and Telecom are being put to use in India’s critical corridors,” said Anand Agarwal, CEO, Sterlite Technologies.
The J&K order needs to be executed by 2016.
0Additionally, Sterlite is also contracted to maintain the Jammu & Kashmir network for an additional period of seven years at a value of about Rs 500 crore.
Agarwal, further added, “The overall sector growth looks positive. We have recently entered in Latin America with a joint venture with Conduspar, a leading cable manufacturer, in Brazil with an initial greenfield capacity of 0.5 million fibre kilo meter (fkm) of optical fibre cables to be ramped up to 1-2 million fkm in the next 2-3 years as market grows. The Brazil plant will be operational by end of September this year. The total annual production capacity of Sterlite will be be 17 million fibre kilo meter (fkm).”
Sterlite holds 6 per cent market share in fiber business and for conductor business it stands at eight per cent.
In India, it has a market share of 35 per cent in fiber and 25 per cent market share in conductor business.
The Indian market size of size is 8-9 million kilo-meter of optical fiber while for conductors it is close to 6,00,000 metric tonne of conductors.
As per the Government of India’s policy to release 150 Mhz of spectrum held by defence sector in the frequency range of 1700Mhz to 2000Mhz, the company has bagged the project to build a new communication network for exclusive use by the armed forces in lieu of the spectrum.
The order is for full rollout of OFC network to be owned and operated by the defence services under the project implementation core group (PICG), Ministry of Defence (MoD). It comprises a highly resilient exclusive OFC based nationwide Optical Backbone for defense sites and access networks at army sites.
"In this precious project, Sterlite is playing an important part in designing, planning and implementation of this countrywide secure, multi-protocol converged network. It is based on dedicated Tri-services Optical Transport Backbone. Sterlite's expertise lies in understanding the geographical profile, network design, product customization and large scale project execution Sterlite's fiber based Intrusion proof solution is designed to create a highly secure network for this critical application," says Agarwal.
The company operates in three business verticals transmission, power and infrastructure. The major contributors are power and transmission. According to Agarwal, the transmission sector is growing at 25% y-o-y again due to 3G and 4G implementation.