Rollouts held up by slow adoption of RoW rules

Indian industry group the Digital Infrastructure Providers Association (DIPA, previously the Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association) claims that to make India fully ‘5G-ready’ around 65% of the country’s towers need to be fiberised, and 1.2 million towers need to be deployed by the end of March 2024. The Economic Times cites DIPA DG Tilak Raj Dua as saying around 750,000 towers have been installed across the country, of which 36% are currently connected to fibre networks. The official went on to claim that network construction work is being slowed in part by energy distribution companies (discoms) refusing or restricting access to infrastructure as a result of delays by state authorities in implementing the most recent Right of Way (RoW) regulations. According to the DIPA spokesperson, only nine states and union territories (of 36) have adopted the updated 2022 RoW rules.