Important Facts For Prelims
TAIPA Calls for Boosting Telecom Network Capacity
- 01 Apr 2020
- 3 min read
Recently, Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA) urged for quickly enhancing the telecom network capacity to cope with the rising data traffic amidst nation-wide lockdown.
- The data traffic has surged by 30% in the last few days as more and more companies are switching to Work-From-Home.
TAIPA
- Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association was constituted in 2011 as an industry representative body registered under the Indian Society registration act, 1860.
- All leading independent telecom infrastructure providers like Bharti Infratel, Indus Towers, ATC India Tower Corp., GTL Infrastructure, Tower Vision and Reliance Infrastructure are the members of the Society.
- The association is dedicated to interact, discuss and deliberate with the Ministries, Policy Makers, Regulators, Financial institutions and Technical bodies etc for promotion of healthy growth in telecom services.
Key Points
- Due to the ‘work from home’ policy for both public and private employees, there has been a 30% rise in data consumption.
- Certain metropolitan cities such as Hyderabad and Bengaluru have posted 70% rise in cellular network data.
- Telecom services come under essential services and thereby are exempted from the lockdown.
- To maintain data usage and smooth functioning of telecom services 24/7 , the telecom sector needs critical, robust infrastructure.
- The states need to align their policies with the Centre's Right of Way (RoW) 2016 norms.
- With more than three years gone, only 16 States out of 36 States/UT’s have broadly aligned their policy with RoW Policy 2016.
RoW 2016 Norms
- Department of Telecommunications (DoT) issued Right of Way (RoW) rules for rollout of communication networks.
- It aims to facilitate the installation of mobile towers, optic fibre and copper cables in a time-bound, non-discretionary manner.
- The rules aim to rationalise administrative expenses across the country to a maximum of Rs 1000 per km for fibre, and a maximum of Rs 10,000 per application for overhead towers.
- It provides for fast-tracking decisions on RoW permits within 60 days after application.
