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.