NEW DELHI: Telecom experts have attributed poor quality of services and low mobile internet speeds to India’s low investment in optic fibre for telecom backhaul deployments. In India, less than 20% of the towers are back hauled on fibre compared with an average of nearly 80% in countries such as USA, China and Korea. Increased fibre action in the country can improve the quality of mobile services, including call drops.India deploys just 15 million kilometres of fibre every year, against 150 million kilometres each year by China. “This deployment needs to increase to at least 50 million kilometres fibre per year to improve the network capacity — both for voice and high speed data including 3G and 4G services,” said Ankit Agarwal, Sterlite Technologies global head for telecom products. Sterlite is part of mining-to-oil & gas conglomerate Vedanta Group.Optical fibre deployments remain the most viable medium for high speed data communication as well as wireless access that ideally requires fibre-based backhaul networks China and the US have installed nearly 1 billion kilometres and 600 million kilometres of fibre, respectively, while India has deployed only 70 to 80 million kilometres, inclusive of private players and government networks. China currently has 250 million 4G users, compared with less than 1 million in India while it has 450 million 3G users compared with around 100 million in India.The concerns over fibre deployment comes at a time when the debate over call drops has reached fever pitch with the telecom regulator recently mandating telcos to compensate customers for every dropped call, subject to a maximum three in a day, a move that telcos have opposed strongly.Both private and public sector are keen to increase their fibre network in the country. As operators look to enhance 3G and 4G capacity, and are keen to improve the quality of service, investments in fibre networks are set to grow, said Agarwal.He, however, said that Right of Way (RoW) is a challenge for operators and there is a need to have a unified RoW policy covering all states and local bodies. This is a major hurdle often pointed out by telcos to offering better quality of services.“Now, more than 25% revenue comes from data for operators. Telcos are realising that ARPU (average revenue per user) growth will come from data and are now seriously looking to increase fibrebased networks,” Agarwal said.US-based Juniper Networks that offers network solutions to telecom operators and large enterprises endorses Agarwal’s views and believes that relatively less fibre deployments are keeping networks from advancing to the next level.Both government-led initiatives as well as private enterprises such as Bharti Airtel , Reliance Jio and Tata Teleservices are putting fibre to connect base stations, but they are the slowest moving piece throughout the country, Juniper Networks India managing director Amajit Gupta said.Telecom consultant and ComFirst owner-director Mahesh Uppal said that India needs substantially more fibre to accommodate the growth in data services, especially video that requires sufficient bandwidth in the backbone.“The absence of fibre can become an important reason for poor quality of internet services since the wireless is not adequate for backhaul. Wireless has helped achieve phone connectivity in record time but offers lower capacity than fibre or cable,” Uppal added.