Cost optimisation: A number of contractors are bidding for the company’s contract to design and install overhead fibre optic cables on electricity poles in designated areas of the Sultanate
@conradprabhu
In a first for Oman’s telecom sector, wholly government-owned Oman Broadband Company, which is playing a pivotal role in implementing the National Broadband Strategy, plans to install fibre optic cable (FOC) across existing power lines, as a cost-competitive alternative to trench-laid cables.
A number of contractors are bidding for the company’s contract to design and install overhead fibre optic cables on electricity poles in designated areas of the Sultanate.
The objective of the ‘Fibre Over Electricity Poles’ project is to “utilise the existing electricity poles to lay Oman Broadband’s FOC (fibre optic cable) for providing broadband services by backhauling mobile sites,” said the state-owned telecom infrastructure services provider.
New poles may be installed where required and new trenches dug depending upon conditions at site, it noted.
As many as 37 mobile sites currently operated by the company will be covered through the ‘Fibre Over Electricity Poles’ project, utilising existing electricity poles and potentially constructing new ones in various governorates.
Trenching for a distance of around 360 kilometres will be required as well.
Oman Broadband — part of Oman ICT Group — has already been collaborating with utilities of Nama Group (formerly The Electricity Holding Company) to benefit from the massive electricity networks and associated optical fibre cables already installed by the latter.
Last October, Oman Broadband signed a strategic partnership agreement with Nama Group to utilise the latter’s nationwide fibre optic infrastructure that currently extends around 74,000 kilometres across the length and breadth of the Sultanate.
Utilisation of Nama Group’s fibre optic network will contribute towards avoiding double investments on similar projects as well as positively increase the pace of projects and achieves better financial returns and cost cutting, said Oman Broadband.
Oman Broadband is currently focused on the roll-out of a passive fibre network infrastructure that seeks to provide equal and open access to telecommunication service providers, on a wholesale basis, and owners and operators of private networks, on a retail basis, thereby enabling end users to efficiently leverage high speed fibre in Oman.
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