SHILLONG: Even two months after the state Cabinet approved the draft Meghalaya Telecom Infrastructure policy, 2018, services of the cellular companies in the city have not improved at all.
The policy was supposed to become effective from January 15, 2019.
Subscribers in the city say that call quality has improved over the years with fewer call drops, but the real problem comes with data connectivity as the mobile internet of most of the companies is very slow.
“Unlike in Guwahati, the internet services here are very slow no matter which company’s network you use”, an irritated subscriber said.
Forget about other areas, connectivity in the Chief Minister’s secretariat itself is a big challenge with signals playing truant unless one has a BSNL connection.
Service providers have asked for permission to install their towers in the secretariat where the network of most of them is very weak.
On the other hand, officials of reputed mobile companies lamented that people in Shillong are not at all forthcoming in allowing them to set up towers as they fear that radiation from these will affect their health.
Stating that a large number of awareness programmes about the safety of mobile towers have not yielded the desired result in Shillong, an official said that almost all the companies face similar challenges while maintaining that till now there is no evidence that radiation from the mobile towers affect health.
It is learnt that around 2000 towers are to be installed in Meghalaya by BSNL and other companies and Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong earlier had said that since Aircel is closed, its towers are lying unutilised and with the new policy, service providers will jointly use these.
However, officials from the companies said that there is nothing new in allowing 3-4 companies to use the same tower and the practice is being followed in the entire country for a long time since maintaining a tower is an expensive affair.
The Cabinet last year was also briefed that with people in the state reluctant to allow the service providers to install towers on their premises, the government will allow the service providers to install towers on its office premises.
