CHENNAI: Cellphone service providers will no longer be able to work out
rental agreements with the owners of private buildings and set up
transmission towers wherever they please. City corporations
and other local bodies will have to grant permission for new cellular
towers and audit towers in their limits on a regular basis.

The
Centre has also directed that no new tower will be permitted within a
1km radius of an existing tower. This will be a double whammy to
cellular operators, which have been given a month to reduce radiation
from mobile towers by 90%.

From now on, a town or city
corporation will have to study the ecological impact of an installation
on birds and animals in the vicinity before giving a cellular tower the
go-ahead, said an advisory issued by the ministry of environment and
forests (MOEF) on Thursday.

Local bodies are also expected to
“regularly audit and monitor electro-magnetic radiation around
recreational, residential, educational and healthcare premises”. They
have also been instructed to erect “large signboards with messages about
dangers of cellphone towers and radiation”.

Cellphone service
providers have so far not required any permission from corporations, the
pollution control board or Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority.
The corporation enumerated the towers in its jurisdiction in 2010, but
that was only to levy a tax on them.

The corporation is already
studying different models to regulate mobile towers. Corporation
commissioner D Karthikeyan said they would replicate the Delhi municipal
corporation’s model. “We will levy a tax and also study the structural
stability of the towers,” he said.

A senior corporation
official said they had not yet received any notification on the
advisory. “When we do, we will coordinate with other agencies to do what
is required,” he said.

Two weeks ago, the Centre ordered all
operators to reduce the radiation emissions from 9.2 w/m2 to 0.92 w/m2,
starting from September. This means that they will have to reduce their
frequencies by a large extent.