No ‘quick nod’ for mobile towers to impact projects in remote areas

The telecom ministry’s demand for easing of green clearances for scaling up mobile networks in remote areas has hit a roadblock, with the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) declining to allow special relaxations for private sector telecom service providers (TSPs) and infrastructure providers (IPs) to install mobile towers and lay optical fibre cables (OFCs) in forest areas, or to give mobile towers the special status available to ‘communication posts’.

“We have requested the Ministry of Environment & Forests to simplify some of the procedures on green clearances and include mobile towers among the list of critical public infrastructure.