Secunderabad Cantonment Board gives nod to boost telecom infrastructure

Secunderabad Cantonment residents will have to brace up for inconvenience on roads with telecom firms likely to take up digging operations soon to lay fibre cable network and install mobile towers. However, they will have to wrap up the digs before June 30 as no permissions will be given between July 1 and September 15.

Secunderabad Cantonment Board (SCB) officials have recently given the nod to develop telecom infra like underground optical fibre cable network, aerial cabling, and installation of telecom towers in its limits by inviting telecom service providers. The SCB, which has been facing a financial crunch, hopes to fill its coffers too with the latest move.

For the first time, the SCB has approved the Right of Way (RoW) Rules under the Indian Telegraph Right of Way Rules 2016, to speed up building telecom infra in the Cantonment limits. Apart from the Cantonment (Class ‘C’) land, the service providers would be allowed to develop infra on defence land. On private properties, the telecom firms would just have to just submit an intimation along with details of the building where a mobile tower or pole would be put up.

The ministry of defence (MoD), in an official communication, to all chief executive officers of cantonment boards, including SCB, had said that any application received for installation of under/over ground telecom infrastructure in defence land should be processed in accordance with the Indian Telegraph Right of Way Rules, 2016.

Accordingly, SCB CEO D Madhukar Naik tabled the communication at its recent Board meeting and got the approval of the Board members. SCB also gave the nod for the fee structure for service providers (applicants) to meet administrative expenses. For instance, 1,000 per kilometre would be collected for underground infrastructure and 10,000 per kilometre for overground infra, including mobile towers.

A senior SCB engineer explained to TOI that telecom firms have to take prior permission from appropriate authorities for laying optical fibre along the roads, power supply poles and bridges/culverts.

Regarding road-cutting, the SCB engineer said the applicant would be accorded permission to take up work through horizontal direction drilling (HDD) method only and the open road-cutting method would be not allowed.