Telecom operators to invest Rs 20,000 crore to counter call drop menace

Telecom operators have installed 48,000 towers in the last 45 days, out of 60,000 towers they promised to install in 100 days at a meeting held in June.

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Manoj Sinha addressing a press conference
Minister of State for Communications and Railways, Manoj Sinha addressing a press conference, in New Delhi on Monday.

In Short

  • Telecom operators have installed 48,000 towers in the last 45 days.
  • The operators will install 1 lakh towers within a year.
  • The govt is working on uniform rules across the country.

Telecom operators on Monday assured the government that they would install 1 lakh new towers in the next 12 months, entailing an investment of Rs 20,000 crore, to rein in the call drop menace and give a fillip to the Digital India campaign.

'TELCOS COMMITTED TO ONE-YEAR PLAN'

Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha told reporters after a meeting with the CEOs of leading telcos such as Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone India and Relaince Jio that they have committed to a one-year plan.

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Telecom operators have installed 48,000 towers in the last 45 days, out of 60,000 towers they promised to install in 100 days at a meeting held in June, the minister added.

Their performance has been satisfactory but the government wants that improvement in networks should be experienced by consumers, he said. This was the second meeting between the government and the operators on the call drop issue.

ONE LAKH MOBILE TOWERS TO BE INSTALLED WITHIN A YEAR

A telecom ministry official said the operators have committed to install a total of 1 lakh mobile towers within a year. The cost of each mobile tower is estimated to be around Rs 20 lakh.

"The customer experience should not only be in the area of call drops but also in the space of data services. We are not anywhere close to the experience required for the success of the Prime Minister's Digital India initiative of," Sinha said.

"The focus of the meeting was success of Digital India. We have committed to install 1 lakh base stations in a year. We have asked for E (71-76 Ghz) & V (50 Ghz) band to support back-haul network. Getting right of way permission for laying optical fibre is difficult so these bands can help," Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) director general Rajan S Mathews said after the meeting.

Wireless services deployed in these bands are considered to deliver broadband speed of up to 1 gigabit per second as in case of optical fibres.

TELCOS ASK GOVT TO REDUCE INTEREST RATES

The Government is working on uniform rules across the country regarding permits and fee charged for laying optical fibre network. The industry has asked government to reduce interest rates being charged on instalments paid for buying spectrum and tie it as per rates decided by RBI.

If government wants to incentivise and push broadband roll out, we have asked to lower interest rate on payments to be made for spectrum. In fact, it should be lower than retail rate as payments are huge. Government should apply new rate on all instalments prospectively and even on those that are due to for previous auctions," Mathews said.

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The government is gearing up for the largest spectrum auction, estimated to be worth Rs 5.66 lakh crore, in which 2300 megahertz of radiowaves will be put up for sale across frequency bands.

Sinha told the operators that spectrum auction will be conducted in September and it will resolve the spectrum shortage problem in the industry.

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