Telecom Commission approves Rs. 1,500 crore subsidy for BSNL

The inter-ministerial body Telecom Commission on Tuesday approved a subsidy of Rs. 1,500 crore for supporting landline operations of BSNL in rural areas.

Government notices to 12 telcos for violating BTS radiation norms

The Telecom Ministry has found that 83 mobile towers belonging to 12 telecom operators were not complying with new radiation rules and notices have been issued to them."Till November 30, 2012, a total of 83 number of BTSes (mobile towers) of various operators have been found to be non-compliant to the prescribed radiation norms. Notices have been issued to the concerned telecom service providers," Minister for Communications and IT Kapil Sibal informed the Lok Sabha.
According to rules, if a site (mobile tower) fails to meet the radiation norms then there is provision of levying a penalty of Rs. 5 lakh per BTS per service provider.
Details provided by the minister show that Bharti Airtel had 14 mobile towers, the maximum among operators, that were not complying with the new radiation norms, followed by Reliance Communications and Vodafone with 13 mobile towers each.
Tata Teleservices' 11 mobile towers, Aircel's 10, six each of Idea Cellular and Loop Mobile, Sistema Shyam's 2 and one mobile tower each of Videocon, S Tel (which has stopped operation in India) and state-run MTNL were found to be non- compliant with the new radiation norms.
The norms implemented from September 1, 2012 mandated operators to reduce radiation emission from telecom towers to 1/10th of the present level to mainly address concerns related to public health.
Among various other provisions, the new radiation norms call for minimum distance of a tower (with two antennas) at 35 meters from a residential building.

 

TRAI asks telecom operators to test quality of data services

To ensure that mobile operators meet quality of service benchmark for wireless data, telecom regulator Trai on Tuesday asked them to put in place a test set-up comprising of servers and test probes covering their entire service area for different data services.
"Trai had mandated every cellular mobile service provider to set up a test set up comprising of servers and test probes to cover the entire geographical area of coverage of different data services in the licenced area," Trai said in 'The Standards of Quality of Service for Wireless Data Services Regulations, 2012' released on Tuesday.
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said mobile operators are required to meet quality of service benchmarks in respect of parameters such as activation of data services, successful data transmission download or upload attempts from a test server, minimum download speed from a test server covering all tariff plans and data drop rate.
"It has also been mandated that service providers have to publish at its website, the details of all data services offered, along with their tariffs, clearly indicating the cities and towns where such data services and tariff plans are applicable," Trai said.
The Authority added service providers should not offer new data services or modify existing data services or tariffs without prior publication at its website.