Indus Towers says 20% of its sites are diesel free

Telecom infrastructure company Indus Towers today said it has stopped using diesel as a source for power generation at 20,000 towers, constituting of about 20% of its 1.12 lakh towers across the country.

It targets to make 10,000 towers more diesel-free during the current fiscal year, said B S Shantharaju, chief executive officer, Indus Towers.

Indus Towers is a joint venture between telecom majors Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular.

“With this, consumption of diesel has come down by about 15%, and our business has grown by about 35% in the past three years,” he added. It uses battery power as a back up on the diesel-free sites, in case of power outage. Besides, it runs 900 towers on solar energy.

Currently Indus Towers has a tenancy ration of 1.98. “While, we may not need to set up more towers in near future, we expect tenancy to grow as telcos are planning to increase 3G coverage. It will further go up with 4G being rolled out,” he added. About 40,000 of its towers have 3G tenants at present.

As solar is not viable at the moment, it would not increase the number of solar-run towers substantially soon, he said.

Meanwhile, the Government has asked the telecom tower companies to power 50% of rural towers and 20% of urban towers by hybrid power, which includes renewable energy and grid power, by 2015. Minimum 75% of rural towers and 33% of urban towers are required to be powered by hybrid power by 2020.

But, tower companies have estimated that they would need about Rs 33,000 crore to meet the green initiative targets set by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

The Government is also looking at the possibility of extending viability gap funding to telecom tower firms for speeding up adoption of renewable energy. It may use the Universal Services Obligation fund or from the various schemes under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) to fund the tower companies for the green initiative.