Trai suggests norms for using street furniture for 5G: Why and how

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has recommended the use of street furniture such as electric poles, bus stops and traffic lights for installing small equipment for 5G services and do away with the requirement of obtaining a permit for installation of small telecom gears. The telecom regulator has suggested the Department of Telecom (DoT) to exempt Low Power Base Transceiver Stations (LPBTS) with effective radiation power of less than 600 watt from seeking clearance under mobile tower roll out rules as well.
“The authority recommends that the DoT clarification dated October 26, 2022 on Indian Telegraph RoW rules 2016 regarding the term ‘street furniture’, should be made part of the Indian Telegraph RoW rules through a suitable amendment in a relevant Gazette Notification,” Trai said.
Why street furniture for 5G
The use of high-frequency spectrum bands for 5G covers a very small area compared to 2G, 3G, and 4G networks. This calls for the need to install small cell equipment for densifying networks and cover signal gaps. Use of previously existing street furniture, such as poles and other structures, for mounting 5G Small Cells can eliminate the need to build thousands of new towers, allowing for the quick and affordable deployment of small cells.
Small cells provide coverage only for a very short distance and therefore they are installed in a dense or hyper dense manner, which can be even more than 200 per square kilometer for good network coverage for high-capacity broadband. Due to its lower level of radiation, small cells require less stringent security and installation practices so it is easy to install and operate.
Pilots running
With the objectives of developing cross sectoral framework which promotes sharing of street furniture infrastructure among various central, state and municipal authorities to develop state of the art 5G network, TRAI had initiated pilots at Bhopal Smart City, GMR International Airport New Delhi, Deendayal Port Kandla and Namma Metro Bengaluru on use of street furniture for Small Cells and aerial fiber deployment.
How these pilots will help
Based on the consultations and learning from these pilots, TRAI is preparing its recommendations to the government on conducive regulatory and policy framework
to ensure successful and rapid rollout of small cells and optical fiber using street furniture in all smart cities, other cities and towns, ports, airports, metro rails, Industrial parks, and estates etc. The emphasis of such recommendations is likely to be more on creating a regulatory framework which facilitates collaboration and participation among various departments, central and state agencies, local bodies, and service providers. The learnings from the pilots will serve as big input for coming up with right policy prescriptions to the Government.
The regulator has suggested that the power distribution company (discoms) should make provisions to provide connections for telecom sites to service providers on priority basis and they should charge telecom operators on the basis of the running load and not on the sanctioned load.
“Telecom sites should be provided electricity connection under utility/industrial tariff. Smart pre-paid electricity meters should be installed in all existing telecom installations on priority and in a time bound manner. Also on all new installations, including that for small cells, discoms should only install smart prepaid electric meters,” Trai recommended.
The regulator said that all discoms should treat street furniture addresses as commercial addresses for the purpose of providing a power connection and allow multiple power connections at the same street furniture commercial address to different commercial entities.