The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is pinning all its hopes on the revenue that will come its way from charges levied on telecom service providers, who have laid optic fibre cables (OFC), overhead cables and copper cables in the city.
On Friday, city Mayor B.S. Sathyanarayana, BBMP Commissioner M. Lakshminarayan and members of the BBMP’s OFC Committee met stakeholders of the various telecom and internet service providers. At the meeting, sources said, a consensus was reached and service providers have now agreed to pay the charges that would be arrived at jointly by the BBMP and service providers soon.
According to committee member and Yediyur councillor N.R. Ramesh, the BBMP has laid down some conditions that the service providers are expected to follow. “Service providers have said they will get back to us after consulting their legal team. They have asked for some changes in the conditions, which we will also verify with our legal team,” he said.
The BBMP has given service providers two days’ time to declare the cables laid by them. According to rough estimates, there are nearly 65,000 km of OFC network, 10,000 km of overhead cables, 7,000 km of copper cables and over 3,000 km of cables laid through the direct buried cable (DBC) method. “After service providers declare the cables laid, we will verify it. If there is any undeclared cable, the BBMP will take it over and sell it in an open auction. This will be another source of revenue for the civic body,” he said.
The BBMP has also put the entire OFC permission and cancellation mechanism on an online platform. “A software was developed for this. This means service providers need not approach any BBMP office for permission. The applications will be accessed online and permissions will be given online after requisite inspections by officials. This is completely transparent and payment can be made through direct bank transfers,” he added.
