Even as 5G rollout in the country has been the fastest worldwide, the pace of tower fiberisation, which is key to high-speed connectivity and lower latency, continues to lag.
The reason for the same can be attributed to higher capital expenditure requirements on the part of telecom operators, continuous regulatory hurdles and charges at the state government level, people in the know said.
Tower fiberisation means connecting mobile towers to high-capacity fibre-optic network. This enables high-speed data transfer between the towers and the core network, ensuring low latency and high bandwidth.
A slowdown assumes significance as the government under the National Broadband Mission had set a target to achieve 70% tower fiberisation by FY25. For the government, the work is to help telcos clear regulatory hurdles, help them with capacity building, help them engage with states if they are not aligned to centre’s right of way policy or charging higher tariffs, among key things. Capex, however, has to be incurred by telcos, which according to them is unnecessarily high owing to higher tariffs charged by some states for laying cables and towers, and other clearance issues.
Officials said that it is highly unlikely that the 70% tower fiberisation target will be achieved. Currently, tower fiberisation stands at 44%. This means that out of the 795,000 mobile towers, about 350,000 towers have been fiberised so far. In July 2022, tower fiberisation was at 35%.
Low tower fiberisation in a way affects the quality of newly launched 5G services as users will not be able to get high speed Internet compared to 4G. Besides, voice quality also gets affected with lack of tower fiberisation.
Apart from the regulatory hurdles at state government level and owing to higher carges, telecom operators have started looking at low cost wireless solutions such as wide-band microwave links for backhaul connectivity that use high-frequency radio waves to transmit data wirelessly.
Meanwhile, the department of telecommunications (DoT) has also reached out to state-owned PowerGrid for utilising it’s dark fibre infrastructure to build capacities for higher bandwidth. DoT wants PowerGrid to lease its dark fibre infrastructure to private telecom operators so that they can provide high-speed connectivity in far-flung areas.
PowerGrid infrastructure is strong and is disaster prone. If the company agrees to provide the infrastructure, the same will be crucial and help with fiberisation, a DoT official said, adding that talks are going on but nothing concrete has come out of that as of now.
Lately, telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel have also urged the government to utilise the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) for tower fiberisation. The demand has also been to ask state governments to cut right of way charges.
The recently enacted Telecom Act paves way for a ceiling on the fee for right of way. The government has a single platform – GatiShakti Sanchar Portal for telcos and tower companies to set up telecom infrastructure. However, still some states are not aligned to the rules as of now.
According to analysts’ estimates, an investment of Rs 2-3 trillion would be required to reach adequate fiberisation of towers and increase more towers.
From: financialexpress
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