Department of Telecommunications formulates the Indian Telegraph (Infrastructure Safety) Rules 2022

The Department of Telecommunications under the Ministry of Communications has formulated the Indian Telegraph (Infrastructure Safety) Rules 2022.  Due to the increasing emergence of Digital Infrastructure and Services, the Central government has established a resilient, secure, accessible, and affordable Digital Communications Infrastructure and Services.

Due to the lack of knowledge of agencies about the existence of utilities or the lack of coordination with utility asset owner agencies, the utility assets get damaged and can further cause economic loss to the utility assets owners as well as business loss and inconvenience to the public. Keeping in mind such factors, the need for rules/regulation/policy to address the issues of safety in the existing telecom infrastructure has arisen, for which the Government has formulated the Indian Telegraph (Infrastructure Safety) Rules, 2022 published in the Gazette of India on January 3, 2023.

The rules include submission of a notice through the common portal to the licensee in order to exercise a legal right to dig any property which is likely to cause damage to the telegraph infrastructure, the provision of the details through the common portal, sending of alerts via text messages (SMS), e-mail and in-app notification, etc. Additionally, in case of any damages, the damages charges must be borne based on the expenses as may be incurred in restoring the damages.

The advantage of these rules for the Government-Central and State/UTs is that many utilities can be saved from unwanted cuts and wasteful costs towards restoration, thus saving thousands of crores for businesses and associated tax loss to the government. While the Inconvenience caused to citizens because of frequent breakdowns may be reduced due to better synergy between the agencies.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.