Bengaluru: The city is staring at a potential blackout of its digital services across-the-board as BBMP (Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike) has resorted to large-scale cutting of Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) of telecom and internet service providers.
According to the service providers, the random cutting of OFC across areas such as Sarjapur Road, Whitefield, Marathahalli and Bellandur, without any prior intimation of telecom and internet service providers, is leading to outages and inconvenience to the citizens in densely populated areas across the city.
Over 1,47,200 Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs) on approximately 34,700 towers have been installed in the state to support telephone, mobile and internet communications.
According to the telecom companies the Palike is treating all over-the-ground cables as unauthorized, though the industry had obtained all necessary permissions and had originally laid them underground.
However, the service providers maintain that they were constrained to lay them overhead with the permission of BBMP as and when the same were unintentionally cut and removed during various civil works carried out by BBMP, BESCOM, BWSSB etc.
Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India), stated, “We are deeply disappointed with the unwarranted action by the BBMP to remove the OFC cables, which has led to network outages and caused inconvenience to customers, many of whom are without connectivity. This impulsive action will also impact overall internet connectivity and businesses, especially IT firms in the city. We would once again like to highlight that all our members are fully compliant with the rules and regulations of the concerned authorities."
"While the industry has been trying to discuss and resolve the issue, BBMP has chosen to remove this key last mile connectivity infrastructure rather than work with telecom companies to find an amicable solution. We once again appeal to the state government and to the BBMP to immediately allow the restoration of the infrastructure and develop a future ready framework to enable deliver world-class digital connectivity to citizens in the IT capital of India," he added.
Mathews further stated that they were open to discussing the issue in a threadbare manner.
The Right of Way rules, 2016, issued by the Central Government for provisioning of the underground/over the ground telecom infrastructure has no restriction on location of telecom towers.
