Telecoms urge authorities to reduce ‘right of way’ rates

LAHORE: Telecom industry is facing hurdles in expanding the optical fiber cable network as exorbitant ‘right of way’ (RoW) charges have catapulted the cost of leasing transmission infrastructure, officials said on Tuesday.

The industry, in a letter written to chief of army staff, federal secretary, and secretary ministry of information technology (MoIT), has urged them all to intervene as all its efforts made so far has remained futile.

“It has been over a year since the industry sought army chief’s help on the RoW issue. The industry had approached him through a letter highlighting the issues of levy of RoW charges by the military authorities and cantonment boards on telecom operators, but to no avail,” a top industry official said.

The Defence Housing Authority (DHA) and cantonment boards have been asked for processing clearance of mobile towers, high-rents on military lands by garrisons, DHAs and Askari Housing schemes, and high antenna fee by cantonment boards. These issues were highlighted with the COAS through an industry letter duly signed by CEOs of all five major players of telecom industry including Mobilink/Jazz, Telenor, Ufone, Zong/CmPak and PTCL.

A top official at a company said the telecom sector, which was thriving in Pakistan through a very healthy competition, was trying its best to provide consumers with affordable internet access to help drive economic growth.

“The field of fiber optics especially with respect to telecommunication is a rapidly changing world in which, seemingly, each day a new product or technology is introduced,” the official added.

He said the use of and demand for the optical fiber has grown tremendously in the recent years in Pakistan. “Fiber optics, with its comparatively infinite bandwidth, has proven to be the solution,” he said and added that however, telecom companies were facing numerous challenges in laying optical fiber cables due to certain restrictions and bureaucratic issues.

The official further said the challenges common to operators in the telecoms sector were high-costs of RoW, resulting in the high-cost of leasing transmission infrastructure, long delays in the processing of permits, multiple taxation at federal, state, and local government levels and having to deal with multiple regulatory bodies, damage to existing fiber infrastructure as a result of cable theft, road-works and other operations. “The unaffordable cost being charged in the name of right of way ultimately makes the telecom projects unfeasible,” he added.

He added the operators, because of unaffordable RoW tariff, cannot seem to recover their cost. “RoW is a legal instrument allowing operators to deploy infrastructure on federal or state roads, power transmission lines, railways etc at a fee. Unfortunately the fees are not fixed and vary from province to province, region to region, and agency to agency,” he said.

Stakeholders in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector have listed several obstacles frustrating broadband penetration in the country and foremost among them is the difficulties in obtaining RoW required for infrastructure deployment. “Because of these challenges; bandwidth a major ingredient for telecommunications service delivery especially for data and video is elusive due to high cost,” a stakeholder said.

The industry official suggested the government must go beyond granting of licenses for eliminating barriers such as bottlenecks in securing RoW, impediments to smooth network operations, where operators were forced to pay levies that were not legalised, and providing adequate security for the infrastructures.

“The government as a matter of urgency must come to the aid of operator and internet service providers by creating an enabling environment and formulate policy where Infrastructure should be interconnected to provide redundancy,” the official said.