Telcos’ body COAI has made a strong plea that the telecom sector be charged industrial tariffs for electricity and not commercial rates, and that power connections be expeditiously provided to telecom infrastructure facilities.
It said doing so was important given the essential nature of services and socio-economic benefits that accrue across multiple sectors from faster 5G deployments.
COAI - whose members include telecom operators like Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea - has also batted for the sector to be provided uninterrupted 24x7 power supply.
“Telecom is an infrastructure industry, but we are still being charged at commercial rates for power. So we don’t get the benefits,” SP Kochhar, Director General of Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI) told PTI.
COAI has demanded that telecom infrastructure be charged at industrial and not commercial rates for electricity. Today, most states provide electricity on commercial tariff rate to telecom industry, placing it in one of the highest brackets of power tariffs.
While telecom tariffs in India are the lowest, the electricity tariffs are being charged to the industry at substantially high rates under the commercial category, COAI rued.
In most states, the difference between an industrial electricity tariff category and a commercial electricity tariff is significant, leading to an avoidable burden to the overall telecom sector.
