Widespread broadband access is essential to reduce the digital divide as it would facilitate the achievement of progressive government plans, support social development, assist in environmental protection and contribute to economic growth.
To ensure the effective deployment of broadband across the country, fiberisation is essential. Today, India has only approximately 1.5 million Km of optical fibre cable (OFC). Less than 25 per cent of the country’s total number of towers are fiberised compared to China, where more than 80 per cent of the towers are fiberised. With an exponential increase in the demand for data and an increasing focus on improving the quality of services, the growth of fibre is very important. In order to meet the requirements of present and future technologies such as 5G, there is an urgent need to improve the fibre-to-the-tower regime.
For expanding mobile and broadband connectivity across the country, it is necessary to explore and utilise the opportunities presented by 5G and satellite communications. Fixed infrastructure development and right-of-way (RoW) clearance need to be the focal points for the successful adoption of these next-generation technologies.
Policy push – NDCP, 2018
The National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP), 2018 aims to fulfil six strategic objectives, of which “broadband for all” is the most important one. It comprises three missions, namely, Connect India, Propel India and Secure India. Connect India aims to create a robust digital communications infrastructure and promote broadband for all as a tool for socio-economic development, while ensuring service quality and environmental sustainability.
The Connect India mission aims to achieve the following objectives: providing universal broadband coverage at 50 Mbps to every citizen; extending 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps connectivity to all gram panchayats by 2020 and 2022 respectively; enabling 100 Mbps broadband-on-demand to all key development and educational institutions; facilitating fixed line broadband access to 50 per cent of the country’s households; achieving unique mobile subscriber density of 55 per cent by 2020 and 65 per cent by 2022; deploying 5 million public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2020 and 10 million by 2022; and ensuring connectivity to all uncovered areas.
To this end, the key strategies are– establishing a National Broadband Mission to secure universal broadband access; implementing broadband initiatives such as BharatNet, GramNet, NagarNet and Jan Wi-Fi to be funded through the Universal Service Obligation Fund and public private partnerships; undertaking a “fibre first initiative” to take fibre to homes, enterprises and key development institutions in Tier I, II and III towns and to rural clusters; promoting collaboration models involving state, local bodies and the private sector for provision of shared duct infrastructure in municipalities, rural areas and national highways; facilitating the fibre-to-the-tower programme to enable fiberisation of at least 60 per cent base stations, thereby accelerating migration to 4G and 5G; leveraging the existing assets of the broadcasting and power sector to improve connectivity, affordability and sustainability by running OFCs above the power line; incentivising and promoting fibre connectivity for all new developmental construction, by making telecom installations and the associated cabling and in-building solutions mandatory in all commercial, residential and office spaces by amending the National Building Code of India; establishing a National Digital Grid by creating a National Fibre Authority; establishing common service ducts and utility corridors in all new city and highway road projects, and related elements; creating a collaborative institutional mechanism between the centre, states and local bodies for common RoW, standardisation of costs and timelines, and removal of barriers to approvals; facilitating the development of open access next-generation networks; facilitating the establishment of mobile tower infrastructure by offering incentives and exemptions for the construction of telecom towers; promoting the deployment of solar and green energy for telecom towers; encouraging active infrastructure sharing by enhancing the scope of infrastructure providers and promoting the deployment of common sharable, passive as well as active infrastructure; and creating a broadband readiness index for states and union territories to attract investments and address RoW challenges.
Indian Telegraph RoW Rules, 2016 and their implementation
The Indian Telegraph RoW Rules, 2016 enable the establishment and maintenance of underground or overground telegraph infrastructure by any licensee. Most states have successfully notified resolution officers and states such as Assam, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tripura and Uttar Pradesh have issued state-level RoW policies, which are mostly aligned with the Government of India’s RoW rules, except for a few instances.
To ensure the adoption of RoW rules, the Ministry of Communications has asked all the states to formulate state-level policies in line with the RoW Rules, 2016 and to appoint nodal and dispute resolution officers across different authorities. The need to develop an electronic application process is also being stressed. Implementation of the NDCP, 2018 is further expected to ensure speedy RoW clearances and to address other challenges in setting up telecom infrastructure in the country.
Based on a presentation by Neeraj Mehrotra, Director (Policy), Department of Telecommunications
