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EPA: Draft document on co-location
of telecom masts ready
Accra, March 25, Ghanadot/GNA – The Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), and its collaborators have completed a draft
document seeking legally binding modalities for telecom
operators to undertake co-location exercises.
The 26-page draft document made available to the Ghana News
Agency is entitled “Guidelines for the Installation and
Operation of Communication Mast in Ghana”.
It is designed to inject sanity into the mounting of telecom
masts and antennas in the face of the rapidly growing telecom
industry.
The document noted that
from the late 1990s till date, the telecom industry,
particularly mobile telecom, has seen rapid growth leading to
the littering of residential areas and the countryside with
telecom masts with its attendant aesthetic and public safety
concerns.
“In some instances, masts are installed without compliance with
existing regulatory requirements; unfortunately no other
structured tower and antenna support structures has been
developed to specifically regulate the location and construction
of masts,” it said.
Co-location allows more than one telecom operator to mount their
equipment at a common cell site and serve their subscribers.
Mr Ebenezer K. Appiah-Sampong, Director of Environmental
Assessment and Auditor of the EPA, told the Ghana News Agency
that in the face of challenges posed by littering of masts,
co-location was the best alternative option to salvage the
situation.
He said even though the
telecom operators were fully aware that co-location was a sure
way to create a win-win situation for all the stakeholders in
the industry including subscribers, regulators and the operators
themselves, they had only been paying lip service to it for
years now because there was no law enjoining them to undertake
co-location.
“The telecom operators are quick to blame the permit agencies
like EPA for the poor quality service. Meanwhile they have not
been able to take a single action on co-location since they
started discussions on it years now,” he said.
Mr. Appiah-Sampong said one of the cardinal purposes of the
guidelines would also be to ensure that the National
Communications Authority (NCA), made it a licensing requirement
for operators to undertake co-location, adding that it should be
possible for the NCA itself to mount masts at strategic
positions for the purposes of co-location.
Operators who spoke with the GNA admitted that even though they
had agreed on hundreds of cell sites for co-location, they had
not been able to take action on even one, for reasons not yet
clear.
The Chief Executive Office of MTN, Brett Goschen, said the
market leader had submitted a list of all its current and future
cell sites to other operators but their competitors had not done
same adding that co-location would save the operators money.
Meanwhile aggregately, operators have made thousands of separate
requests to the permit agencies, including the EPA, District,
Municipal and Metropolitan Assemblies, the Ghana National Fire
Service and Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) for permits to
mount their own cell sites within residential areas.
The GNA has a long list of complaints made to the EPA by
residents of communities where cell sites have been mounted.
The complaints include mounting of cell sites without the
consent of residents; congestion of masts in particular
communities; masts close to people’s homes; radiation; fumes and
noise from generators causing health problems; schools losing
pupils whose parents are concerned about nearby masts.
Mr Appiah-Sampong said the myriad of complaints the EPA received
and attended to on daily basis was enough to ensure that the
telecom companies were made legally enjoined to undertake
co-location.
On delays in the issuance of permits, Mr Appiah-Sampong noted
that several of the requests presented to the EPA for permits
were incomplete, saying that an operator needed to show proof of
consultation with residents of the community within which it
sought to mount a mast, but in most of the cases there was no
such proof.
“We have asked most of the operators to take the necessary steps
to complete their requests but they have not. There are others
who have completed the process and we have asked them to come
and pay for the permit to be issued but they have not done so
for months now,” he said.
Mr Appiah-Sampong said some operators mounted cell sites without
the requisite permits and some had had to bring their masts down
of that reason.
“There are currently several telecom masts which have been
mounted and are functioning without the requisite permits and
the EPA keeps receiving and attending to complaints about
those.”
Mr Appiah-Sampong said the EPA, together with the other permit
agencies, the regulator and the operators themselves, was
designing a public education programme to disabuse the minds of
citizens about the fear of radiation and other concerns about
telecom masts.
“But it is our opinion that the operators should have led the
way for the permit agencies and the regulators to support but
they keep putting huge money into other ventures to promote
their brands instead of educating the public to correct the
wrong perceptions about telecom masts,” he said.
GNA
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