Use defence optical fibre for telecom coverage in remote Himachal Pradesh areas: Trai

PTI

New Delhi, December 14

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has said that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) should approach the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for accessing a part of its optical fibre network or suitable bandwidth to extend telecom coverage in the far-flung areas of Himachal Pradesh.

The regulator has recommended that in Lahaul and Spiti, Mandi, Kullu and Chamba districts, the villages that are yet to be connected under the BharatNet Project, should be immediately connected on VSAT media that can be surrendered as soon as the optical fibre cable (OFC) backhaul is made available.

The identified districts have 181 uncovered villages, of which 14 are planned to be covered under the ‘354 village scheme’ and 142 are to be covered under the ‘Saturation of 4G Mobile’ scheme of the USOF.

Trai in its recommendations on “improving telecom connectivity and infrastructure in far-flung areas of Himachal” suggested that the DoT should take up with the MoD for the allocation of one or two pairs of the OFC on NFS network for extending telecom coverage (including broadband services) to villages located in far-flung or border areas of the state under the BharatNet project.

“If the same is not feasible, the MoD may be approached for allocation of suitable bandwidth on its existing functional OFC to extend telecom coverage to such villages,” Trai said.

Under the Project Kranti, also known as Network For Spectrum (NFS), the BSNL has implemented a nationwide OFC network is being, wherein almost 60,000 km OFC is being rolled out for exclusive use by defence forces in lieu of 65 megahertz spectrum surrendered by the defence forces for auction.

The regulator has said that it is already in receipt of a reference on enabling the ICR for remote and hilly regions frequently prone to natural disaster-based emergency situations and it will come up with separate recommendations in this regard after due consultations.

Trai has recommended that the government should fund capital expenditure and operating expenditure required for providing telecom infrastructure and connectivity to the 25 uncovered villages through the Universal Services Obligation Fund.

“The authority recommends that the DoT may take up the case with the Himachal government for not levying any RoW (right of way) charges on telecom service providers and IP-Is for connecting remote and hilly areas in the state, including all locations in four districts,” Trai said.

The regulator has suggested that the DoT should take up with the state government, NHAI and the BRO that all road construction, road widening or other related works should be done with prior coordination with telecom operators, and the liability of contractor for making payments for damages to telecom networks should be included ab-initio in the contracts.

The regulator has suggested that the DoT should ask the Himachal government to consider providing electricity to telecom sites within 15 days of connections request at utility or industrial tariff and consider waiving the last mile installation charges for extending electric connections to telecom sites in remote and hilly areas.