National guidelines for telecom towers in two months: Official

In a bid to standardise the installation and execution of telecom towers across the country, a set of guidelines will be brought into effect in the next two months, a telecom department official said Thursday.

The national guidelines have been formulated by Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) in consultation with the department of telecommunications (DoT), the official said.

The regulations will take into account health hazards due to electromagnetic radiation and structural concerns regarding the country-wide establishment of new towers as well as monitoring the existing ones.

"The guidelines will unify rules regarding the entire country's tower installations and address concerns related to health hazards and structural requirements of those towers," said Atanu Ghosh, deputy director general, Telecom Enforcement, Resource and Monitoring Cell (TERM) at Kolkata.

It will enable the telecom authorities to monitor the emissions as well as check whether the towers are constructed according to the parameters.

"It has been prepared with all the stakeholders from the industry in a detailed manner. It will come up in a rule form and it will be available to all the chief secretaries of all the states," said Ghosh.

The parameters are in accordance with the mandates of International Commission of Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) and will include technological advances such as the 4G spectrum.

Most importantly, it will direct mobile phone manufacturers to display the specific absorption rate (SAR) which is a measure of the radiation absorbed by the human body (the head) while using a cell phone.

The norms also say that mobile handsets shall comply with the SAR values of 1.6 W/kg averaged over 1 gram of human tissue. Earlier it was 2W/kg over 10 gram of human tissue.

"This will come into effect by year end. Mobile companies will have to include a certificate as well. SAR testing of handsets will carried out by the test laboratory in the Telecom Engineering centre (TEC) in New Delhi," said Ramakrishna P., principal advisor, COAI.