The Telecom Equipment Manufacturers’ Association (TEMA) of India, in a communication to Hon’ble Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh, has suggested strong regulatory guidelines to enforce the withdrawal of diesel subsidy to the telecom service providers or alternately introduce appropriate onetime tax per tower on the telecom service providers and telecom tower companies.
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Referring to a Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) report, TEMA has communicated that the total number of telecom towers in the country by the end of 2010 were around 400,000, consuming on an average power of around 3-4 kW per tower site, of which about 60 per cent is from off-grid sources.  Â
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“Currently, this number has already gone up and we have about 500,000 telecom towers dotted across the map of India.  Going by reports, India will have about 300,000 more telecom towers in the next five year or so. This would mean that in a country which is already power deficient will have to feed about 800,000 telecom towers and the dependency on off-grid source mostly operating on diesel-based generator sets will increase manifold. This, in turn, would mean more subsidy support for the telecom service providers,” said Ashok K. Aggarwal, Honorary Director General.
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“The Government should levy a per site onetime tax on all the sites owned by the mobile operators equivalent to 12 years of subsidy, i.e., Rs.10,00,000/- per site to offset, fully or partially, the loss to the exchequer on account of subsidy.  This will give the Government revenue to the tune of Rs.50,000 crore, which the nation needs badly at this hour,” Aggarwal further added.
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