Now Telecom towers in defence land

Defence has agreed to provide land under its possession on lease basis to telecom PSUs BSNL and MTNL and independent infrastructure providers to build towers and lay optical fibre cables to improve quality of services within the cantonment areas and military stations. Soon your mobile signal will not fall when passing through certain areas of the city that are located close to cantonments and other defence areas as airports. The DoT has announced that telcos will now be able to set up infrastructure in areas controlled by the defence forces.

At present, subscribers often experience sudden signal drops in certain areas of the cities and metros, including in the capital Delhi because these zones come under the jurisdiction of defence services. Since telcos were not being allowed to set up towers and other related infrastructure in these zones, this had led to many cities and towns having coverage holes or dark spots which adversely affected the quality of service.


"It has now been decided to allow independent infrastructure providers and PSUs to set up shared towers on defence land on leasehold basis," Defence Ministry said in a communication to Telecom Secretary.

The DoT, in a communication to the service chiefs of the Army, Air Force and the Navy, the director general of defence estates and the ordinance factory boards, has said that the government has decided to open up all zones controlled by the armed forces to telcos. The DoT has also added that the government had taken the decision to ‘improve the coverage and quality of telecom services’.

At the same time, the DoT has also added a rider that only state-owned telcos—BSNL, MTNL, and stand-alone telecom infrastructure companies such as GTL, Acme, Indus, and the hived off tower arms of Reliance and Tatas amongst others, can access defence land.

It has also mandated that all telecom infrastructures that are set up on defence land must be shared between all service providers. The DoT has also asked the armed services to allot land to telcos on 10-year lease at market rates. In a bid to address concerns of the defence agencies, the DoT has said that the armed forces will enjoy all rights to stop or terminate telecom services operated out of their premises on security grounds.

The DoT move is in line with a Trai proposal. The regulator wanted all such zones across the country to be classified as ‘critical’ and had also sought that the government mandate that operators share infrastructure in these places to ensure that quality of service is maintained.