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Telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw<\/a> while addressing the media on Thursday underlined four basic foundations for ensuring faster 5G rollout in India, which are the allocation of spectrum, reforms in the processing of RoW permission, co-operative federalism and rollout of services.
Vaishnaw said “spectrum is the rawest fundamental material for rolling out 5G”, adding that the auction of 5G airwaves has been conducted “well in time and systematically” and spectrum allocation letters have been issued to the telecom operators.
“5G requires more towers, poles, fibre, and bandwidth. This will require the telecom industry to launch more telecom infrastructure,” he said.
According to the amendments, RoW application procedures for small cell has now been simplified. Telecom licensees will be able to use street infrastructure to deploy telecom equipment at a nominal cost of Rs 150\/annum in rural areas and Rs 300\/annum in urban areas.
Further, to facilitate faster fiberisation, street infrastructure may be utilized at a nominal cost of Rs 100\/annum to install overground optical fibre. The amendments also create a distinction between ‘poles’ and ‘mobile towers’.
The telecom department has rationalised administrative fees to reduce the cost of compliance.
Telecom licensees can enter into an agreement with private property owners for installation of telecom infrastructure, and they will not require government approval.
According to an official press release, the IT systems of all states\/UTs and major infrastructure central ministries such as railways, highways have been integrated with the central RoW portal to make India ready for 5G launch.
The minister mentioned that 13 states\/UTs have also implemented deemed approval clause in their RoW policies ensuring speedy approvals. “These measures have resulted in major reduction in average time for approval of RoW applications, from 435 days in 2019 to 16 days in July, 2022,” he added.
“By October, 5G will be launching and then we will rapidly scale up to sub-urban and rural areas,” the minister said.
SP Kochhar, Director General, COAI, said that the Indian Telegraph Right of Way (Amendment) Rules, 2022 will ensure the speedy rollout of the technology and help India become 5G-enabled.