India Regulator to Permit Sharing of "Active" Tower Infrastructure

India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has approved recommendations from the regulator, TRAI to permit operators to share the active component of their tower networks. Until now, they have only been allowed to share the passive infrastructure aspects of their tower installations.

The term "passive infrastructure" includes the towers, shelters, cooling systems, AC and DC power supply, diesel generators, air conditioning, site leases and other electrical and civil works that then enables a network operator to install the active infrastructure such as base terminal station equipment, associated antennas and backhaul connectivity to a mobile telecommunications operatorÃ's network at such telecommunications site.

Sharing of active infrastructure will allow operators to share key electronic components such as antennas, feeder cables, nodes, radio access network, transmission systems and backhaul.

The move should make it easier and quicker for operators to roll out their networks in new license areas as they can now piggyback a larger proportion of their infrastructure onto existing tower networks.

TRAI says that the country would require approximately 330,000 towers by 2010 against the present number of approximately 100,000 towers. Apart from 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.

In a separate move, the DoT is also proposing a law change to mandate that the network operators share their passive infrastructure in areas where there is high network congestion and where urban planning restrictions make it difficult for the operators to build more towers.

Posted to the site on 21st February 2008