The Hindu 21.12.2010
GHMC refuses to allow road cutting
| Asks Internet and telecom service providers to go for trenchless technology |
Most service providers are reluctant to go for trenchless technology
However, water board and CPDCL can take up emergency repairs
HYDERABAD: Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has stopped giving permissions for private telecom and Internet service providers from digging roads in an effort to halt damages to the recently laid and ongoing recarpeting road works in different parts of the capital.
Net and telecom service providers were asked to form a consortium and to consider taking permissions for laying any cables in one go so that all these can be inducted into a common underground duct to be laid or already laid on the roadsides.
“Save for the Water Board and CPDCL to take up emergency repairs or works, we have categorically informed service providers that no more road cuttings. The multiplicity of agencies involved in digging is causing much inconvenience to the public and traffic too as the roads are getting damaged,” explained Chief Engineer R. Dhan Singh.
Even if GHMC is collecting road cutting fee from different agencies at roughly Rs.2,000 a metre for restoring the damaged road sections, Mr. Singh pointed out that such restoration is spoiling the road ‘camber' for the entire stretch making it uneven and susceptible to breaking up when it showers.
Intense competition
Moreover, senior officials also feel the service providers have already put in enough capacity in the last few years and intense competition is only making them dig more. Most service providers are reluctant to do the trenchless technology where only a six inch incision into the ground is made to lay a cable.
Along with the cable operators who dangerously wrung wires on electric poles, telecom/net service providers have been told by Commissioner Sameer Sharma in recent meetings to make use of the available underground ducts or face action.
But their contention is that the rates by the ducts put in by private service providers is too steep following which the suggestion was made to form a consortium to work out a solution.
In fact, Chief Engineer says that the BSNL was game for laying a fresh duct from Telephone Bhavan, Saifabad to Masab Tank and Narayanaguda on a pilot basis for a 10-km stretch where all cables of all service providers can be inducted.
It is still in the limbo for lack of response from the service providers.
