Delhi LG's help sought over mobile phone towers

Three leading telecom industry associations have written to Delhi Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung, seeking his support for proper norms to erect mobile towers since delays on this count are causing call drops and poor service quality.

"To provide seamless connectivity without any gaps, it is required to have a continuous mesh of cell sites in the mobile network architecture," the associations said, referring to the need for optimal level of mobile phone towers and optic fibre infrastructure.

"However, of late, due to various issues, state governments and local authorities have not been able to devise bylaws and state-specific guidelines that could address the concerns on non-adequate telecom network coverage," said the letter, a copy of which is available with IANS.

"In fact, numerous complaints regarding call-drops, non-completion of calls, poor audio quality and other quality of service issues have been reported by the customers," said the letter, alluding this was being caused by the denial of timely permissions.

The industry lobbies - Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India, Cellular Operators' Association of India and Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association - have specifically sought the Lt. Governor's intervention in the following areas:

- Clearing all pending tower and optical fibre cable (OFC) installation applications on priority and on fast track basis;

- Enable tower and OFC installation at all requisite places within the state to provide required telecom and data coverage;

- Follow the guidelines regarding installation of towers in line with Department of Telecom Tower installation guidelines dated Aug.1, 2013;

- Assign a single window clearance to expedite the permission process in a time-bound manner;

- Formulation of norms for easy installation of telecom towers on government buildings;

- No Right of Way charges for OFC being laid by operators as has been done in the case of National Optical Fibre Network project.