Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA) said that draft policy of Madhya Pradesh is pending for notification since 2015 impacting its business.
Indian telecom tower companies are also facing issues such as multiple fee levies of up to Rs 1 lakh, restriction on location of towers, limited land availability of 100 sq. mtrs. on Government lands and restriction of mast height up to 20 mtrs on Government lands, lack of single window clearance, multiple NoCs and permission of tower is limited to a period of 5 years only etc. in Madhya Pradesh.
Madhya Pradesh has more than 31,207 mobile towers mounted with more than 98,540 BTSs serving 71.6 million wireless subscribers.
TAIPA said that the draft tower policy pending for notification since 2015 is not aligned with the Department of Telecommunication Indian Telegraph Right of Way (RoW) policy notified by central government in November, 2016.
The RoW policy dated November 2016 has features such as no restriction on location of telecom towers, single window clearance mechanism, defined time-period for approvals, appointment of Nodal officers, nominal administrative fees and deemed approval etc.
“The states should align their policies with guidelines issued by centre to ensure deployment of critical telecom tower infrastructure across the state,” said Tilak Raj Dua, director general of TAIPA.
Indian states such as Jharkhand, Haryana, Odisha, Rajasthan and Kerala have aligned their tower policies with the central government guidelines.
TAIPA represents tower companies such as Bharti Infratel, ATC towers, GTL Infrastructure, Reliance Infratel, Indus towers and Tower Vision.
