TRAI's in-building access consultation paper is a good step at solving infrastructure problems

TRAI just released a consultation paper seeking feedback for regulation on installing cell phone towers in urban areas. This will regulate installation of cell phone towers in urban areas all across the country. Without a regulation policy in place, one can only imagine the kinds of negotiations and deals telecom service providers have to make with each cell tower site, which can be a hospital, an airport, a mall, a commercial complex, or an apartment building. A centralised national policy on the issue will prevent confusion of local regional norms. There are independent actions taken against cell phone towers in Delhi, Goa and Mumbai that affected call quality and increased the call drop rates. Without any regulatory norms from the government, local bodies are setting up their own regulations for cell phone tower installation by telecom operators. This may involve specific directions that can turn out to be extra taxing on the telecom service providers. When the BMC, the municipal governing body of Mumbai was mulling over regulations for the number of cell phone towers it could allow, it was considering taking permission from the residents in the top floors of buildings. [caption id=“attachment_298578” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  Image: PTI[/caption] Operators have long known that drop rates in dense urban areas is a problem. Operators have a range of diagnostic tools at their disposal, which allows them to locate problem areas where there is an increased susceptibility to call drops. While the operators themselves have the information needed to solve these problems, there are a number of real, on ground problems. Operators know the rate of call drops, and how many towers are needed to handle all the calls in a particular area. In Goa, a number of cell phone towers are non-operational, or are shut down because of concerns of cell phone radiation. A similar problem is seen in Delhi too. The MCD has been sealing existing towers, leading to known increase in the rates of call drops. The MCD and resident’s associations were responsible for sealing 70 cell towers in just one month last year. These cell towers had the necessary permissions to be set up, and the telecom operators had already invested in them and were maintaining them. This measurably increased the call drop rate by twenty per cent. [caption id=“attachment_298579” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  A cluster of cell phone towers in a dense urban environment[/caption] Radiation fears play a big role in deployment of telecom infrastructure in densely populated urban areas. The government norms mandate one tenth the exposure to radiation compared to global standards. The irrational fears create severe roadblocks in the ability of telecom service providers to deploy technology to increase coverage. Cell phone radiation is not ionic, and that is not the kind of radiation that causes cancer. A banana, your home or the human body are all more radioactive than a cellular phone, as this xkcd chart shows. The problem is that without official regulation, already existing towers can suddenly be taken down by local operators. This means that there are spontaneous holes in coverage because someone somewhere suddenly got scared of too much radiation. This puts additional burden on the telecom service providers, and replacing the hole in coverage with another tower can take up to a year. Such tower take-downs lead to call drop problems, and this is another problem that can be preventing with appropriate regulations.