Reliance Jio’s high mast towers installed by the company for the launch of its 4G services, have been stated safe and environment friendly after a study was conducted by Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai.
Reliance Jio had secured sanction from the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) to install 220 towers each with 25-meter height.
The company had approached the IIT-B for civil, structural design and stability testing. After the testing, professor of department of electrical engineering Abhay Karandikar had issued a technical opinion April 15, 2013.
The report stated, “Reliance Jio has developed a very innovative in-house design for ground-based mast (towers). The company does not propose to deploy any air conditioning as is the current requirement of traditional cell-site installation. Thus, it results in huge savings on account of power consumption. Towers are designed to typically consume just 600-700W of power. Secondly, Reliance Jio proposes to use effective battery backup and electricity thereby eliminating the need of permanent diesel generators resulting in zero diesel consumption and emission. It is, therefore, a truly green solution.”
It further added, “These towers were found to be structurally safe against natural calamities like earthquake and storms.”
The report also said that the towers complied with the DoT and international standards and the towers have only one spectral radiation happening from each tower thereby limiting the radiation exposure from each tower site.
The report added, “Also, these towers are adequately away from residential/commercial buildings so as to provide further safety from the EMF exposure risks. Antennaes for these towers are far away from the ground considering the proposed height of 25 meters and surface reflections are minimal.”
However, one flaw which was stated in the report was the electricity supply boxes which are installed at the ground level have been left unguarded with only a caution message.
Jio is currently at about 70% coverage versus the biggest player in the market and plans to launch only after 90% coverage. The company aims to attain 100 million subscribers in one year.
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