New Delhi: Mobile tower installations have reached only 60 per cent of intended target of 1,00,000 towers annually, mainly due to delay in permission from local authorities and other structural issues, industry body COAI said on Tuesday.
Cellular Operators' Association of India (COAI) also said it is "reasonable" for regulator Trai to review service quality norms, especially at a time when technology is changing dramatically, but added that policy or regulatory actions need to be "curative rather than penal".
"We expect that in any particular year there will be 1,00,000 mobile tower installations. But at the last count, it has reached 50,000 or 60,000 towers," COAI Director General, Rajan Mathews said.
The big impediment has been lack of crucial installation permissions, Mathews said, asserting that customers' grouse on mobile service quality and call drops also need to be viewed in the backdrop of structural issues and infrastructural bottlenecks faced by operators.
"The biggest impediment is to get timely permission for our cell towers and laying of fibre. There are instances, at local level, of towers being disconnected, fibre cut and disruption to our network. We need to look at all these in totality," he said.
The recent initiative of Department of Telecom (DoT) to bring together various stakeholders, including MCD Commissioners in Delhi to resolve outstanding issues, is an approach that should be replicated and amplified in various states, he added.