Many states also charge annual and renewal charges on telecom infrastructure providers. To ease the development of telecom infrastructure across the country, the Union government in 2016 came out with the Right of Way (RoW) policy. Building the backend infrastructure for 5G rollout needs investments of tens of billions of rupees and delays or arbitrary charges by local authorities could increase costs further. To be sure, the rollout of 5G services also depends on spectrum auctions, which may not happen in 2021 as was anticipated earlier. For 5G services, the number of tower sites will automatically go up to 14,000-15,000, said Anand Agarwal, group chief executive, Sterlite Technologies Ltd.“Fast paced fiberisation will be the key for enabling smooth densification of network required for 5G services," Agarwal said.

Source: Mint November 04, 2020 02:39 UTC