BBMP's Latest Decision Might Lead to Digital Blackout in the City

BBMP’s (Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike) latest decision to cut off Optical fibre Cable (OFC) of the telecom and ISPs is causing several outages in the city as it might affect the operations of the IT companies, consumers and citizens in a great deal. Considering all over-the-ground cables as unauthorized, BBMP unintentionally removed them during civil works conducted by BBMP, BESCOM, BWSSB and this raises concern to the industries across the city.

Commenting on the upcoming crisis, Rajan S Mathew, Director General, COAI, says, “Such fibre cutting activities will hurt businesses, citizens and Government services in the Silicon Valley of India immensely. In the consumers’ interest, industry is seeking an early appointment with the relevant authorities to discuss, deliberate and arrive at a mutually agreeable solution, as soon as possible, and seek stoppage of any form of coercive measures to force a solution.”

Presently, there is no comprehensive State Tower Policy in the city that assures the smooth provisioning of the telecom infrastructure. Therefore, Karnataka Government must formulate a State tower policy with an alignment to Right of Way rules to provide the best practice for the current scenario. Failure to this might bring the entire city to a digital blackout, causing huge loss in the economy of the state as well as the nation.

Rajesh Chharia, President, Internet Service Provider Association of India, says, “BBMP should come with an OH (Over Head) policy as major developmental work is going on in the City. All cities, Nationally and Internationally, have OH cables”. Huge investments have been made by the telecom industry for setting-up infrastructure in the Karnataka Circle that delivers high speed connectivity to the IT industry and the citizens. Over 1,30,200 Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs) have been installed in the state and it equals nearly INR 13,000 crores. Interestingly, the sector contributes over 25 percent of the revenue generated from the state to the Exchequer through levies and taxes.

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