Sectoral regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Wednesday came out with a consultation paper on using street furniture and public structures for deploying small cells and aerial fibre. The regulator said street furniture like utility poles, billboards, lamp posts, traffic signals, and public structures like gazebos, bus stops etc, provide utility services to city dwellers but with little or no change, they can also be utilised to mount small cells and aerial fibre for providing telecom services as well.
The authority has listed a set of 17 questions around using street furniture and what should be the policy and regulatory aspects for it. The regulator has already started a pilot project at Delhi’s international airport wherein street furniture will be utilised for deployment of telecom infrastructure. Apart from Delhi airport, similar pilots are being initiated at Kandla port in Gujarat, Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation and Bhopal smart city.
Trai said street furniture are under various public and private authorities that have administrative jurisdictions in municipal bodies, smart city administrations, government departments, railways, airports, ports and metro train systems, stadia etc. “Granting access to street furniture by these controlling authorities could remove a significant hurdle in 5G small cell deployment in the country,” the regulator said. Further, it has been said that 5G when deployed on infrastructure owned by these authorities creates a win-win situation where the authorities can benefit from 5G use cases like smart waste disposal, smart traffic light, smart metering, smart grid monitoring, disaster management, automation, energy management, new streams of revenue generation etc.
The use of public street furniture will obviate the need to have greenfield deployment of towers or poles for small cells and fiber thus bringing down the capital expenditure and time involved for rolling out the networks and services. Through the present consultation paper, Trai intends to seek the inputs of stakeholders on issues related to outdoor small cell and aerial fiber deployment using street furniture for the successful rollout of next generation networks in the country. Stakeholders can send their comments by April 20 and counter comments by May 4.
