5G network rollout in India is not very far away. But for it to be a success, the industry has echoed that the fiberisation of mobile towers is important. But that’s not all the infrastructure that will be required to make 5G a success in India. There’s a clear demand for upgraded and better infrastructure associated with the 5G rollout. But things can’t remain the same in the 5G era as they were in the 4G era. The telecom operators have to pay different amounts of money in different states to lay fiber or set up other infrastructure. To add to their trouble, most of the times clearance for the deployment of infrastructure is very much delayed. To ensure that these problems don’t exist with 5G, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is working on a national right of way (RoW) portal for faster infra clearances, K Rajaraman, telecom secretary told ET Telecom.
National RoW Portal to be a One-Stop-Shop for Applications, Approvals and More
Rajaraman said that the new national RoW portal that the DoT is working on will be a central one-stop shop for entry of approvals, applications, etc. Further, the telecom minister said that this portal will be connected to the backend of state portals or some of the states will be directly onboarded to the new platform. There has been some progress in many states accepting the Indian Telegraphy RoW Rules 2016. But there are still states where the local authorities are following their own RoW rules. In addition to this, the DoT is also formulating a street furniture policy for efficient use of street infrastructure to deploy small cells for delivering a better 5G experience to the users in India. It is worth noting that DoT is also working on a unified policy for fiber deployment across the country. All of these developments are positive for the telecom industry which is struggling with the infrastructure rollout for years now.
