Kathmandu, August 22

If things move ahead as per the plan of Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA), all the mobile towers in the country will be earthquake resilient within the next few years. To realise this plan, the authority will enforce three different rules on telecom tower design, vulnerability assessment, and re-strengthening and retrofitting of risky towers.

Even though the NTA for long had been planning to introduce these rules with a target to better manage base transceiver stations (BTS), commonly known as mobile towers, they remained only in the study phase and on paper. Studies have already been conducted on the plan to bring directives for assessment of vulnerable towers and their retrofitting.

After power earthquakes of April and May struck the nation, work on bringing rules to manage the mobile towers in a better way and keep them active even during times of disaster like earthquakes has received huge priority. According to NTA, the work on introducing rules for mobile towers was snail-paced earlier as the authority lacked structural engineers to go through the studies conducted by consultants and to devise a guideline.

In the current fiscal, NTA has included a plan in its annual programme to conduct further studies on the draft guidelines that have been framed for earthquake risk assessment, telecom tower construction and re-strengthening and retrofitting of vulnerable towers.

NTA has already endorsed a guideline on ‘Erection of Telecommunication Antenna Structures/Tower’, which is under consideration at the Ministry of Information and Communications.

Achyuta Nanda Mishra, assistant spokesperson for NTA, said that the management of towers and keeping them active even during times of disasters is a common goal of the three new directives. “Once the guideline on vulnerability assessment is endorsed, NTA will check the condition of towers and it will be the responsibility of telecom companies to re-strengthen and retrofit the weak towers.”

The directive on telecom tower construction will be the guideline that telecom companies will have to abide by while installing towers. So far, as per NTA, companies are constructing towers wherever they want to expand or improve their service quality. Though there is no exact figure, it is estimated that there are more than 6,000 BTS installed in different parts of the country in the course of telecom service network expansion.

Studies conducted on the condition of mobile towers have revealed that telecom firms have been found to be installing towers on the rooftops of houses that have not been built as per the National Building Code and pose risks. The devastating earthquakes of April and May have also created panic among the house owners who have towers installed on their rooftops and they have piled pressure on telecom companies to remove the towers.

According to NTA, more than 70 towers have been removed from rooftops after the house owners asked the companies to do so. As a result, this has created a problem for companies in providing quality service in areas where the towers have been dismantled.“Towers have been removed even from houses that are quite fine structurally and now the companies are facing problems in finding a space to fill the gap by installing permanent towers,” said an official of NTA.

MoFALD issues directive

KATHMANDU: The Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development (MoFALD) has made it mandatory to get approval of municipalities and village development committees to set up any rooftop mobile antenna structure and tower.

The newly introduced ‘Basic Guideline on Settlement Development, Urban Planning and Building Construction 2015’ has stated that local bodies can issue permits only after clarification from concerned technical officials that the installation of the tower does not pose any risk to the building structure and safety.