`Cell tower radiation harmless’

The radiation from cell phone towers are `non-ionizing’ and are completely harmless to the avian population, according to A Siva Prakash Rao, Circle CEO- Tamil Nadu, Indus Towers Ltd (ITL).

He said the three key promoters of the company- Bharti Infratel, which is a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel Limited, Vodafone India and Aditya Birla group company Idea Cellular - had been discussing the idea of taking the company public but no final decision has been taken in this regard.

Responding to questions from Business Line, on the sidelines of a news conference in Coimbatore on Wednesday, about the threat posed to migratory bird population by the radiation emitted from cell phone towers, he said there were two types of radiation-ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. The radiation emitted by the telecom towers were characterised as `non-ionizing’ and he said this `does not have any strength to displace the ions in the body’.

He said according to news reports, the population of migratory birds was going up `tremendously’ in the country and mentioned popular migratory bird sanctuaries like Pulicat Lake, Rann of Kutch, Vedanthangal etc to support his view. Even the Parliamentary committee that went to the cell tower radiation issue has not come out with any definite conclusions. He said `as of now, there is no conclusive evidence as such’ and the World Health Organisation (WHO) has also been monitoring it.

He said `we had similar kind of myths’ decades back when television sets and microwave ovens were introduced in India but these turned out to be `completely unfounded’.  The non-ionizing radiation from cell phone towers was `completely harmless’.

He said the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI) had published an exhaustive report on ` Public Health and Safety in the use of Mobile Communications’. In the report, it was mentioned that the Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) emitted by the mobile towers were at the ` relatively low end of the electromagnetic spectrum’ and the non-ionizing radiation produced by them ` are unable to break chemical bonds in molecules’. This was in contrast to ionizing radiation such as x-rays which could lead to `tissue damage and possibly cancer’.

Rao said the industry was extremely conscious of the need to educate the common people about the ground reality. The Department of Telecom has also established a term cell to formulate the norms for cell tower radiation and ensure that the tower operators complied with them. The industry is required to provide radiation details periodically to the term cell. In fact, Indian radiation norms were tougher than international norms in this respect.

He said the industry encountered mild resistance- which he put at one per cent- from the people against erection of telecom towers. But the company sends its expert team, including doctors, to meet the public and clarify their doubts. This was how the company was able to expand its tower network in Tamil Nadu.

Asked about the shareholding of the promoters in Indus Towers and whether they planned to take the company public, he said Bharti Infratel and Vodafone India each had 42 per cent share in Indus Towers Ltd and the balance was held by Idea Cellular. During the current fiscal, the company had installed 200 towers in Tamil Nadu and an equal number may be planned for the next fiscal.

On whether there was any plan to take ITL public, he said `it is a decision of the board’. He said those possibilities were there but the decision was to be taken by the company’s board and declined to elaborate.

Rao said Tamil Nadu was an important market for Indus Towers and nearly 95 per cent of the population has been covered now. The company has more than 13,000 towers, having more than 26,000 tenancies in the state, offering a near perfect uptime of 99.99 per cent ensuring uninterrupted connectivity. More than 4,600 of these sites had become green sites, where usage of diesel for power generation to operate cell sites during times of power cut is avoided.

He said the company has planned to increase its market share from the current 52 per cent in Tamil Nadu in a phased manner by continuously expanding its tower network. All over India, the company has more than 1.15 lakh telecom towers.

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