At present, India has 5.93-lakh telecom towers. The Indian telecom sector needs to add another 1 lakh towers and implement the Right of Way (RoW) policy announced in 2016 immediately to provide quality services to more than 1 billion subscribers.
“With the increase in data consumption and Work From Home (WFH) policy being adapted by many companies in India till 2020-end, we do need additional deployment of telecom towers,” T.R. Dua, Director-General, Tower & Infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA) said.
A number of States are not permitting installation of new sites, even though maintenance activities are being allowed, he added.
The RoW rules were floated in November 2016 to provide approvals for setting up of towers, laying of fibre cables and settling disputes in a time-bound manner. They were also intended to improve coordination among companies, State governments and local bodies.
However, since 2016, only 16 states out of 29 States and 7 Union Territories have broadly aligned with Row policy 2016, Dua said.
On Wednesday, TAIPA wrote to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) secretary seeking his intervention in faster implementation of RoW policy. The industry body also sought immediate implementation of ‘Enhancement of Scope of IP-I’ policy announced on March 13, 2020, which permits active infrastructure sharing in the country.
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