The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has urged enforcement units to alert all state police departments across India to clamp down on the rampant theft of critical network gear. The theft has triggered around Rs 8 billion of losses for telcos, disrupted 4G/5G expansions and impacted quality of mobile coverage.
In a directive dated May 27, 2024, DoT has asked its field enforcement units in all licence service areas (LSAs) to also conduct quarterly reviews of the telecom gear theft situation with national law enforcement agencies. It further asked the matter to be taken up at upcoming state broadband committee meetings.
In its letter, DoT added that the telcos had pointed out that such telecom equipment theft incidents were higher in some geographies, including Delhi NCR, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu.
The directive comes after Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea Limited (Vi) sought the government’s intervention, saying they were facing huge losses and heavy additional replenishment costs amid rising incidence of network gear theft across India. They had pointed out that expensive active telecoms infrastructure gear such as remote radio units (RRUs) and base-band units (BBUs) were being regularly stolen since October 2023.
