Urgent need to increase mobile towers, TRAI

New Delhi, Apr 11: In a major recommendation, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) today said that there is a need for immediate identification of sites for setting up crucial infrastructure like mobile towers which has to be increased to more than three lakhs from the current one lakh.

The exponential growth in wireless telecom services calls for massive investment in infrastructure particularly passive, active and backhaul components.

''The country would require about 3,30,000 towers by 2010 against the present number of nearly 1,00,000 towers'', TRAI said.

Apart from the huge investments needed the time taken in roll out could be a major bottleneck in the achievement of 500 million subscribers by 2010.

Even if the target is achieved it will only be about 50 per cent of the tele-density with major gaps in the rural areas, the authority said.

TRAI has sent recommendations on infrastructure sharing to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

The DoT had sought recommendations from the regulator on effective sharing of passive infrastructure like towers etc.

Accordingly the regulator, has concluded consultation process and finalised the recommendations.

Given the significance of infrastructure sharing, the authority has not only considered the issue of passive infrastructure sharing but has given the recommendation regarding active infrastructure sharing and backhaul on a suo-motu basis.

international practices and has opted for cooperative efforts amongst telecom service providers with least regulatory intervention. The authority has recognised the need for immediate identification of critical infrastructure sites. It has recommended a Joint Working Group under the Chairmanship of the District Magistrate to take spot decisions. The representatives of the telecom service providers, Municipal Corporation/local bodies and a representative of Military Land Control Wing, where necessary would be its members.

In another major recommendation, the authority has sought amendment in the license condition to allow active infrastructure sharing limited to antenna, feeder cable, Node B, Radio Access Network and transmission systems.

However, it has not favoured sharing of spectrum at this stage.

Another major initiative is backhaul sharing. Considering the importance of backhaul sharing for mobile services in rural and far-flung areas, it has recommended amendment in the license conditions to allow service providers to share their backhaul from Base Trans Receiver Station (BTS) to Base Station Controller (BSC).

It has noted that such a sharing is permitted on optical fibre as well as radio medium at certain 'nodes'. However, no sharing of spectrum at Access Network side has been recommended.

In order to provide level playing field and roll out opportunities to all the licensees, the authority has expanded the scope of financial incentive for passive infrastructure sharing in rural and far-flung remote areas.

Accordingly it has recommended that all the licensees in any service areas should qualify for financial subvention schemes meant for rural areas though at reduced scale compared to the winner in the tender process of USOF Administration.

The licensees should be required, according to the authority, to announce on their website the details of existing as well as future infrastructure installations available for sharing by the other service providers.

The mode of commercial agreement has been left to the telecom service providers but it has reserved the option of prescribing a standard commercial agreement format in future if the process of infrastructure sharing does not become a pattern of planning in the schemes of telecom service providers. It has sought conclusion of commercial agreements in four weeks time.

The authority has also recognised the need to encourage use of non-conventional energy sources and has recommended to the DOT to finalise suitable schemes in consultation with the concerned ministry so as to resolve the critical power availability issue.

UNI