Vodafone India welcomed the recent Right of Way (RoW) rules issued by the Department of Telecom (DoT). Thanking the Minister Shri Manoj Sinha and Secretary Shri J. S. Deepak for the new RoW rules, Mr. Sunil Sood, MD & CEO, Vodafone India said, “The RoW Rules 2016 so published are another major step towards making processes simple and progressing towards a stable and transparent policy regime. It will further contribute immensely towards improving ease of doing business, hasten roll out of networks, help attract more investments and enable a faster realization of Digital India, which at Vodafone India, we are committed to.”
“The Prime Minister and the government have taken several pioneering initiatives towards actualizing the vision of Digital India. In the telecom sector itself, during the last two and a half years, several progressive steps have been taken transforming India from spectrum scarce to a spectrum surplus nation. Game-changers like EKYC using Aadhar for onboarding customers and GST are being introduced,” he added.
According to the new rules, the authorities involved in granting permits to companies requesting to gain RoW access will have to do so within 60 days of the application. After the permitted 60 days, the approval “shall be deemed to have been granted”. This rule can resolve several long-pending issues faced by the telecom industry.
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To address the concerns about the fees charged by the local bodies to grant these permissions, the new rule says that, “Every application under the rule “shall be accompanied by such fee to meet administrative expenses for examination of the application and the proposed work as the appropriate authority may, by general order, deem fit”. Such fee to meet administrative expenses “shall not exceed one thousand rupees per kilometer”, it added.
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) too has welcomed the new set of Right of Way (RoW) rules released by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
