The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has reportedly urged the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to do more to stop the theft of telecoms gear from cell towers, which has escalated in the last few months amid aggressive 5G rollouts.
The COAI sent a letter to DoT secretary Neeraj Mittal saying that incidents of theft have increased several times over since October 2023.
In the letter, COAI director general SP Kochhar said that thieves are mainly making off with remote radio units (RRUs) and baseband units (BBUs). He also said that theft is particularly rampant in Delhi NCR, Rajasthan, Assam, Andhra Pradesh & Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Punjab & Haryana, with just 31 districts contributing to as much as 50% of the theft incidents reported pan India.
The letter said that a huge number of sites have been stolen from several times and claims that the stolen gear is being openly sold on e-commerce sites such as Ebay, Telefly, Seeker816, Dorfatrade, and Alibaba. In most cases, telcos are unable to recover both the stolen equipment and the subsequent losses in replacing them.
The COAI letter asked the DoT to contact all state chief secretaries to prioritise telecoms theft cases, arrange police protection for telecoms infrastructure and block websites selling the equipment.
