Telecom tower companies fight a losing war against 'diesel mafia'

 Telecom tower companies have been fighting a relentless war against diesel and electricity theft at their cell sites (telecom towers) for long, losing around Rs 2,200 crore every year, yet its end is nowhere in sight.

Over the years, diesel suppliers, along with technicians and other personnel who man the towers, have "captured" almost 50% of the 4 lakh towers in the country.

The modus operandi and intent are simple and clear; sources, who did not want to be named, say diesel dealers, very often along with operation and maintenance engineers (OMEs), take over towers and run their local economy on pilfered electricity and money earned from diesel –which most of the time is adulterated – supplied to the towers.

And however illegal this may be, tower operators have not been able to do much for years now. All they can do is shut down towers in these zones and take a hit on their business or just reduce their dependence on diesel for operating towers; but to curb this organised crime has proved near to impossible for them.

"I know of a case in Noida, where the tower had to be shut down because the company did not want to allow this to happen. For the moment, that seems to be the only way it can be controlled but it hits the firm's revenue and business adversely, not to mention higher call drops in that area," said a senior official of a tower company, who preferred to remain anonymous.
According to him, diesel bills are inflated 4% to 5% – roughly estimating to Rs 300 per tower per day – of the actual bill and very often owners, on whose real estate the towers are erected, pilfer electricity from towers to be used for their housing society or their personal businesses.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that with 50% of around 4 lakh towers in the country facing this problem, the tower firms could be taking a hit of around Rs 6 crore every day. This roughly works out to a collective loss of Rs 2,190 crore due to bloated diesel bill for the seven players in the market. This figure excludes the losses on account of pilfered electricity.

Tightening of tower monitoring process has helped to some extend but tower firms still haven't controlled the menace that's haunted them for several years now.

"We are winning the war (against the diesel mafia). Once upon a time, we used to talk about it as war but we no longer term it as that," said the official.

He feels that "effective supervision" of diesel procurement and electricity consumption is the way to tackle the problem that is directly hitting the bottom lineof these firms.

Though a former senior executive of a telecom tower company, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, said the clout of the organised "telecom tower capturers" was only getting stronger and the problem was far from over.

According to him, "tower capturing" was rampant in country's semi-rural areas like eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP), in cities like Benares and Chitrakoot, where towers were erected on buildings owned by local "goons". Information acquired from government, as on May 31, UP had the largest number of towers at 90,826, followed by Maharashtra and Goa at 80,154.
And since every tower company is trying to widen its network due to intense competition, and as the stringent Department of Telecom (DoT) norm of an uptime of over 99.95% has to be adhered to, they get sucked into the regional illegal diesel suppliers' web.

Their attempt at controlling the crime by hiring retired army and police officials as supervisors of towers has not yielded much result. These officials are put through rigorous integrity tests, and an extensive reference check is done before being hiring. Most of the supervisors face a threat to their life. There have been instances of official supervising these towers being roughed up because they took on the "diesel mafia". One such case is that of Salil Tandon, who was pulled out of his official vehicle and thrashed brutally some years back.
Such incidents have prompted tower companies to provide armed personal security officer (PSO) to circle heads and other officials managing the cell sites (telecom towers). That has ensured their safety but not stopped the crime.

Many feel wisdom was to look the other way in order to allow smooth functioning of business. A telecom official said Tandon had not been smart enough to understand that "this happens (overbilling of diesel supplied and pilferage of electricity) and is an acceptable chori."

The district collectors and district magistrates of these areas were also not able to do much in the absence of any official complaint against the diesel suppliers and OMEs.

In a bid to clean up the system, the tower companies are spending heavily on technology and trying to bring down usage of diesel by moving to alternative energy like solar, nuclear and others. Improving power supply condition in many areas is also helping them.