India’s optical-fibre supply chain—crucial to telecom, banking, defence targeting systems and everyday digital services—is dangerously exposed due to overwhelming reliance on Chinese components, warn CloudPhotonix co-founder Tarun Sibal and technology expert Dr. Jaijit Bhattacharya.
Speaking at a StratNews Global Roundtable, the two said India produces almost none of its optical transceivers, the devices that convert light into electrical signals. Nearly everything is imported, leaving the country vulnerable to strategic pressure. If China halts supply, “slowly our networks will degrade,” Dr. Bhattacharya said. “You will not be able to stream content, run payments, or keep banking systems operating.”
Sibal said the global industry is rapidly moving to 400G and 800G technologies while India remains stuck around 10G—yet even these older variants depend on foreign suppliers who may soon abandon them for higher-value markets.
The consequences, they warn, extend far beyond consumer inconvenience. Modern warfare is fibre-dependent. India’s aircraft carriers contain more internal fibre than the entire city of Delhi, and even micro-delays can cripple missile-defence systems. Passive components—like the fibre itself—can be chemically sabotaged to degrade early. “That is weaponisation,” Bhattacharya said, urging India to adopt a U.S.-style Trusted Fiber regime mandating domestic manufacturing and traceability.
Both experts argue that India’s biggest obstacle is the absence of market access for domestic companies. Cheap, subsidised imports make it impossible for Indian firms to scale, echoing the situation India faced before its mobile-phone manufacturing boom. “Indian manufacturers don’t have access to the Indian market,” Bhattacharya said.
Sibal said startups like his are trying to build cutting-edge technology while competing with low-cost imports and paying for global expertise and training. What the sector needs, he said, is clear policy signalling, design-led incentives, and working-capital support—not subsidies.
“India cannot afford to outsource its optical nerve system anymore,” he said.
In a career spanning three decades and counting, Ramananda (Ram to his friends) has been the foreign editor of The Telegraph, Outlook Magazine and the New Indian Express. He helped set up rediff.com’s editorial operations in San Jose and New York, helmed sify.com, and was the founder editor of India.com.
His work has featured in national and international publications like the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, Global Times and Ashahi Shimbun. But his one constant over all these years, he says, has been the attempt to understand rising India’s place in the world.
He can rustle up a mean salad, his oil-less pepper chicken is to die for, and all it takes is some beer and rhythm and blues to rock his soul.
Talk to him about foreign and strategic affairs, media, South Asia, China, and of course India.
