About 1K mobile tower applications in UP stuck for approval: Industry body

About 1,000 applications to install mobile towers in Uttar Pradesh are stuck for approval, especially in Noida and Ghaziabad, industry body Digital Infrastructure Providers' Association (DIPA) said on Friday.

Mobile towers play an important role in enhancing network quality, especially for 5G services requiring higher numbers of towers as compared to 4G network.

DIPA said telecom infrastructure providers are facing problems in getting permissions for deploying infrastructure in UP, especially Noida and Ghaziabad.

DIPA Director General T R Dua said despite applying on the online portal Nivesh Mitra -- the single window system of the Uttar Pradesh government -- after providing all necessary documents and depositing the application fee, no permission for deployment of telecom infrastructure has been granted.

Close to 1,000 applications are pending, where the members have already made non-refundable payments of Rs 1,000 each, amounting to Rs 10 lakh, DIPA said in a statement.

DIPA members include ATC Telecom, Indus Towers, Ascend Telecom, Summit Digitel, Sterlite Technologies, Crest Digitel, Suyog Telematics, Signotox Towers, iBus Infrastructure, Applied Solar Technologies (AST), CloudExtel and Pratap Technocrats.

"We request the Government of Uttar Pradesh to clear all pending applications at the earliest for faster rollout of 5G services in Uttar Pradesh," Dua said.