Trai seeks views on using electric poles, street furniture for 5G network

Telecom regulator Trai on Wednesday invited public comments on the possibility of using street furniture like electricity poles and bus stops for the deployment of telecom networks, specially 5G.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said that the use of public street furniture will obviate the need of deploying new mobile towers and fiber resulting in reduction of capital expenditure and time involved for rolling out the networks and services.

"Granting access to street furniture by these controlling authorities could remove a significant hurdle in 5G small cell deployment in the country.

"In turn, 5G when deployed on infrastructure owned by these authorities creates a win-win situation where the authorities can be benefited from 5G use cases like smart waste disposal, smart traffic light, smart metering, smart grid monitoring, disaster management, automation, energy management, new streams of revenue generation etc," Trai said.

The regulator said that the sharing of infrastructure amongst various entities is also in sync with PM Gati Shakti initiative.

Trai said that issues like sharing of the street furniture amongst various users, permissions needed for power supply under state electricity laws, exemptions or bulk permissions for small cell deployment etc are required to be addressed.

The regulator has fixed April 20 as the last date for the comment and May 4 for the counter comments.