The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) is working on a new regulation under which the developer/building owner will have to deploy and bear the cost of the in-building telecom infrastructure.
The design of the in-building telecom infrastructure will have to be incorporated in the actual masterplan, making it a prerequisite before the municipality issues a building permit.
According to TRA, this is to ensure that a subscriber gets access to quality telecom services at the best available prices in the market and ‘such a right to seek out should not be denied’. ‘Current contractual arrangements between operators and building owners/developers constrain the fundamental user right of free choice of their telecommunications supplier,’ TRA stated in its ‘public consultation on the Framework for In-Building Telecommunications Infrastructure’, for which it is calling all the stakeholders to submit their comments to it by October 17, 2019.
‘The new in-building infrastructure framework is expected to reduce the cost of the telecommunications system and thereby incentivise further and faster investment in fibre network.
Thus, it will become a major policy measure to achieve the objectives of the national broadband strategy.