Friday, September 19, 2014: The telecom department will soon order deployment of solar powered towers to enhance mobile coverage in the Northeast particularly in mountainous regions. As a result of the recent study stating about the low telecom coverage in the Northeast areas including Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram, DoT’s decided to adopt alternate energy sources to run mobile towers.
As per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ( Trai) report, AP has the highest coverage gap of 55.9 per cent whereas in Meghalaya, Mizoram and Manipur, the gap is of around 38.1 per cent, 32.3 per cent and 24.3 per cent respectively.
‘Go green’ policy has gained immense popularity in government circles, as per the policy mobile operators will have to reduce diesel consumption and run 50 per cent of their towers in rural areas and 20 per cent of them in urban areas on hybrid power from next year. And by 2020, they will need to run 75 per cent of their towers in rural areas and 33 per cent of their towers in urban areas on hybrid supply.
However, given the huge capital expenditure required for setting up the solar energy capacity, the possibility for telecom to adopt green energy technologies are low. Consequently, DoT has lately made efforts to provide viability gap funding (VGF) to telecom operators and tower companies which will help them out to meet their green energy targets. The DoT official stated that the cost might go up to 1 million for teleco. It also proposes to involve Renewable Energy Service Providing Companies (Rescos) in motivating the go-green thrust.
