Theft of active telecom equipment at all-time high: COAI to DoT

NEW DELHI — There has been a substantial rise in theft of active telecommunications equipment in the country, which is being sold on various websites like eBay and Alibaba, thus hampering services for consumers, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said on Friday.

In a letter to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), the COAI said from October 2023 onwards, such incidents have increased manifold.

Radio Remote Units (RRUs) and Baseband Units (BBUs) are the main hardware being stolen.

The COAI asked the department to intervene in the matter urgently and issue orders for blocking websites selling active equipment.

Such incidents are disproportionally high in a few specific geographies of Delhi-NCR, Rajasthan, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Punjab and Haryana, with just 31 districts contributing to 50 per cent of the theft incidents reported pan India.

The COAI further stated that its members were taking various measures to prevent similar incidents from happening.

However, no solution is completely foolproof, and each approach has its own set of challenges.

Additionally, multiple instances of theft have occurred even after implementing preventive measures.

Due to technical as well as legal challenges, its members are neither able to recover the stolen equipment in most cases, nor are they able to fully recover the losses incurred due to such incidents, it added.

Considering the major scale at which these incidents are occurring now, the COAI mentioned that its member Telecom Service Providers, are incurring huge losses as well as additional expenditure in replacing the equipment.