Telecom companies to set up 1 lakh towers within a year

Top telecom companies on Monday committed to install 1 lakh towers within a year involving an investment of about Rs 20,000 crore to improve the quality of services and bring down call drop rate.

The new telecom minister Manoj Sinha held a meeting with the CEOs of the telecom companies to discuss various issues involving the sector particularly call drops.

“Telecom operators have installed 48,000 towers in last 45 days, out of 60,000 towers they promised to install in 100 days,” said Mr Sinha. The minister said that operators have now committed to one-year plan.

“Their performance has been satisfactory but government wants that improvement in networks should be experienced by consumers,” he said.

The minister said that customer experience should improve not only be in area of call drop but also in space of data services. “We are not anywhere close to experience required for success of Digital India initiative of the Prime Minister,” Mr Sinha said.

Telecom minister told the operators that spectrum auction will be conducted in September and it will resolve spectrum shortage problem in the industry. Mr Sinha said the government is studying a proposal of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India that aims at strengthening present consumer grievance redressal system and giving more powers to the regulator.

Bharti Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal, Vodafone India head Sunil Sood, Idea Cellular CEO Himanshu Kapania, Reliance Jio Infocomm MD Sanjay Mashruwala and Telenor CEO Sharad Mehrotra were present in the meeting. “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) and 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,\" industry body COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews said.