Gujarat state needs to double the number of mobile towers: TAIPA

Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA) today said that existing Gujarat tower policy dated 3rd October 2012 only regulates provisioning of 4G services a particular technology by laying fibre and erecting poles.

TAIPA said that the existing 4G policy also levies multiple fee levies like annual renewal fee, security deposit and one-time charges for telecom infrastructure installation and escalation of annual fee by 10 percent after every three years etc.

Tilak Raj Dua, Director General, TAIPA said "The Gujarat state needs to notify a tower policy that is aligned with Right of Way (RoW) rules issued by the central government in order to ensure seamless tower installation across the state irrespective of any particular technology. This will address issues such as call drops, network outage, and connectivity gaps etc. Which are faced by the subscribers due to the number of limitations imposed on the mobile tower installation, hindering rollout of essential critical telecom infrastructure across the state."

Furthermore the policy imposes exorbitantly high charges for laying the OFC cable ranging from rupees 1000-1500 per running meter which amounts to rupees 10 lakhs per kilometre while the charges prescribed under the Indian Telegraph Right of Way (RoW) rules dated 15th November 2016 issued by Central Government is rupees 1,000 per Kilometre for laying OFC and rupees 10,000 for deploying telecom towers.

The industry has also highlighted through a number of representations and submissions to respective authorities for notifying a comprehensive tower policy which is technology agnostic, addresses the need for telecom infrastructure and aligned with the RoW policy.

"The development of robust telecom infrastructure is the bedrock for achieving Government's transformational reforms such as Digital India, e-governance, Smart Cities and cashless economy etc. Hence, State authorities need to align the existing policies with recent RoW rules which will eventually help to realize the dream of Digital India, " he said.

Today, Gujarat state has more than 26,000 mobile towers mounted with more than 1 lakh BTSs serving 69 million wireless telecommunication subscribers, TAIPA pointed out that.