DoT considers an affordable annual fee for street furniture for 5G

DoT had set up a committee to review the availability of street furniture for a seamless 5G network following Kerala’s proposal to use street furniture efficiently, including electricity pylons to roll out telecommunications infrastructure. Punjab has also come up with a draft for the use of street furniture policy.

New Delhi: The Department of Telecommunications (DOT) is considering an affordable annual fee for using street furniture to implement 5G infrastructure.

The fee will probably be in the range of Rs 200-300 per. street lights or electric pole and will depend on the location – urban or rural areas, said a senior official from the department. The aim is to use various spaces in municipal buildings, post offices, bus and railway stations for the roll-out of infrastructure, which is crucial for the success and introduction of 5G on a large scale.

The street furniture will include street lighting, electricity and other supply rods or any other street-level infrastructure that can house wireless equipment, mainly small cells to enable telecommunication players’ toolboxes to bring their networks closer to end customers.

The draft street furniture policy is almost ready and will be finalized when TRAI’s views on its consultation paper on the same issue will be out, the official said.

A single window approval for approvals from various government agencies will also be part of the new policy to make telecommunications players easier to do business.

The use of higher frequency bands for 5G services would require that macro cells be supplemented with extensive small cell deployment to support all kinds of applications and applications in all locations.

DoT had set up a committee to review the availability of street furniture for a seamless 5G network following Kerala’s proposal to use street furniture efficiently, including electricity pylons to roll out telecommunications infrastructure. Punjab has also come up with a draft for the use of street furniture policy.

The telecommunications regulator TRAI has already started a pilot program to use street furniture for 5G four locations including Kandla Port in Gujarat, Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in Delhi, Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation and Bhopal city.

The use of street furniture is an optimal way to implement next-generation telecommunications infrastructure to overcome Right-of-Way (RoW) challenges. The department is likely to auction the 5G ether in the middle of this year, and after frequency allocation to telecommunications companies, commercial rollouts are expected in early 2023.

TRAI has issued a consultation paper on the use of street furniture for small cells and air fiber. The dense proliferation of small cells was crucial for mass adoption and availability of 5G services, as higher bandwidths had to be supplemented with more base stations for high quality 5G services.

Small cells are low-energy radio access bases or base stations (BSs) operating in licensed or unlicensed spectrum, which have a coverage range from a few meters up to a few hundred meters. The properties of small cells (radio, antenna) are compressed so that they are portable and easy to implement, and they are intended to provide local coverage in households and hotspot services, especially in areas such as city centers and transport hubs. Mac Pro Tricks