India’s Department of Telecoms has notified an amendment in rules to ease the rollout of communications networks by fixing a nominal one-time fee for over-ground cables at Rs. 1,000 per kilometer and waiving all other fees other than administrative and restoration charges.

The new right-of-way (RoW) rules also simplified documentation for laying over-ground telecom cables.

“The Central Government has notified the Indian Telegraph Right of Way (Amendment) Rules, 2021 on 21st October 2021 to incorporate the provisions related to nominal one-time compensation and uniform procedure for establishment of Overground Telegraph Line in the Indian Telegraph Right of Way Rules, 2016,” an official statement Friday said.

It added there will be no fee other than administrative fee and restoration charges for establishing, maintaining, working, repairing, transferring or shifting the underground and over-ground telegraph infrastructure.

“These amendments will ease Right of Way Related permission procedures for establishment and augmentation of Digital Communications Infrastructure Across the country,” the statement said.

A PTI report stated that industry body Digital Infrastructure Providers Association (DIPA) said optical fibre is a fundamental and structural part of both mobile and fixed broadband networks, and faster rollout of fibre is important for backhauling a large amount of data at high throughput, improving reliability, and reducing latency.

The amended RoW rules would also go a long way in helping India’s thousands of cable operators and MSOs who lay cables to bring broadband and entertainment services into millions of homes.

However, cumbersome rules make things tricky on the ground for LCOs specially, who string their cables on electric poles, trees, residential complex rooftops, etc. in a haphazard manner. Earlier, costly fee also encouraged cable ops to cut corners.

It is expected that with the recent amendments in rules, Indian cities would sport better aesthetics and hanging of cables would get reduced in a major way.