Ankit Agarwal, MD, Sterlite Technologies, heads the company which has developed and patented the world’s slimmest 160-micron optical fibre for telecommunication in Maharashtra. It can pack 3X more capacity than a traditional 250-micron fibre. In construction, where duct space is precious, duct laying accounts for 60 per cent of the fibre deployment cost. Network builders world-wide are in a perennial quest to reduce the fibre size to pack in more capacity in the available duct space. For example in a large-scale project like Bharatnet where India needs to deploy 20 million fibre km cables by 2025, using 160-micron instead of standard 250-micron fibre can reduce the deployment time by 15 per cent, enabling the use of ducts with a smaller diameter, thereby reducing the plastic footprint by 30 per cent.