The Hindu 09.10.2013
‘Illegal’ OFCs in Yediyur ward disconnected
In coming days, Bangaloreans are likely to experience
outages or decline in Internet speed. Why? Because the Bruhat Bangalore
Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is training its guns on unauthorised optic
fibre cables (OFCs) laid across the city.
Members of
the BBMP’s OFCs Committee disconnected OFCs in front of a corporate
company in Yediyur ward on Tuesday. The BBMP also served a notice to the
company. Yediyur Councillor N.R. Ramesh justified the disconnection by
stating that at the behest of the company, the telecom service provider
had even put up a temporary pole on the footpath. “We disconnected the
OFCs here as the temporary pole was inconveniencing the pedestrians. We
want this to be a warning to other service providers and companies,” he
said.
With the BBMP keen on going full steam ahead
against unauthorised OFCs, the Internet speed will surely slow down and
thousands of consumers are likely to be affected by this. Admitting
this, members of the OFCs committee stated that the BBMP was losing out
revenue amounting to crores as the service providers had laid these
cables without the permission of the civic body. “
Earlier
in the day, the OFCs committee visited several places in south
Bangalore to find unauthorised OFCs in sewage pipelines, storm water
drains, manholes and even on trees. Several service providers have also
been using DBC (direct buried cable) method to lay cables along the
arterial roads.
At M.H. Marigowda Road, opposite Al
Ameen School, a telecom service provider had dug a pit to put in a
junction box. After putting in the junction box, the road was not
restored.
The BBMP will have to spend nearly Rs. 30
crore to restore the roads destroyed by the service providers, he
claimed. “There are nearly 55,000 km of unauthorised cables. This is
mainly due to the failure in monitoring by the engineers at the division
level,” he added.
Mr. Ramesh and the former Deputy
Mayor S. Harish said that the committee would include this in its report
to be submitted to Commissioner and Mayor by November 15. The committee
will also frame the rules and regulations, besides fixing ground rent
rate. This rate, they said, may range from Rs. 300 to Rs. 600 a metre.
A
meeting would soon be convened with the chief executive officers of all
the service providers in the third week of October and will be chaired
by Mayor B.S. Sathyanarayana and Commissioner M. Lakshminarayan, they
added.
