DoT dials cops to stop network gear theft

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has called on its enforcement units to alert all state police departments across India to clamp down on the rampant theft of critical network gear that has already triggered around Rs 800 crore of losses for telcos, disrupted 4G/5G expansions and impacted quality of mobile coverage.

In a directive, dated May 27, the department has asked its field enforcement units in all licence service areas (LSAs) to also conduct quarterly reviews of the telecom gear theft situation with national law enforcement agencies. It also wants the matter to be taken up at upcoming state broadband committee meetings.

The DoT directive comes after Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea (Vi) recently sought the government’s intervention, saying they were facing huge losses and heavy additional replenishment costs amid rising incidence of network gear theft across India. They had pointed out that expensive active telecoms infrastructure gear such as remote radio units (RRUs) and base-band units (BBUs) were being regularly stolen since October 2023.

“The LSAs are requested to conduct regular meetings with telecom service providers (TSPs) on the equipment theft and sensitise state police regarding the issue,” the DoT said in an internal letter to its field enforcement units, a copy of which was seen by ET.

In its letter, DoT added that telcos had pointed out that such telecom equipment theft incidents were higher in some geographies, including Delhi-NCR, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

“The TSPs are estimated to have already incurred around Rs 800 crore of losses as well as additional expenses towards replenishing the stolen equipment. But customers are the ones suffering the most as such incidents invariably lead to a decline in the quality of mobile broadband services,” said a senior executive of one of India’s biggest telcos.

He added that network expansions were also impacted, and that due to technical and legal challenges, telcos were unable to recover the stolen gear in most cases, which is why, strict government action is needed.

Back in March 2024, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), which represents Jio, Airtel and Vi, had alerted telecoms secretary Neeraj Mittal that multiple foreign websites were allegedly selling a host of active telecoms infrastructure gear online suspected to have been stolen from India’s telco networks.

The COAI, in fact, had then named some of these foreign websites in its letter to Mittal and had called on the government to block them immediately. Some international websites named in COAI’s letter, dated March 14, included eBay, Alibaba, Telefly, Seeker816 and Dorfatrade that were allegedly involved in selling stolen telecom network gear. ET has seen a copy of COAI’s letter.

The telco lobby body had also called for strict action from the authorities, pointing out that theft of active network gear would be covered within the offence of causing damage to telecom infrastructure under the Telecommunications Act, 2023. “The government has already recognised the seriousness of such an offence and classified the same as a cognizable and non-bailable offence under the Act.”