Lutyens Delhi and its densely-peopled offices is finally opening doors for private telecom operators. The government on Monday cleared the way for private mobile phone companies to set up shared cellphone towers in high security areas in all metros.

The move will let GSM and CDMA operators set up common infrastructure and jointly approach security agencies for clearance in security-sensitive zones, at first only in Delhi and Mumbai but later in metros elsewhere too.

Communications and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran, who announced the decision on Monday, also made it clear that no telecom company will be able to set up a tower in Delhi (to start with) that it can refuse to share.

Private telecom companies Airtel, Hutch and Idea and the telecom PSUs BSNL and MTNL, represented by their top executives, were present during the Minister’s announcement, made after a closed-door discussion. All said they welcomed the decision.

The move open up a fresh target market for mobile phone companies in lucrative metropolitan telephony market, which had largely-been denied because multiple cellphone towers were either a security hazard or an extremely ugly sight.

Till date, the Ministry of Communications and IT had encouraged infrastructure-sharing in rural areas, and that too outside municipal limits. With Monday’s decision, it has demonstrated a readiness to de-restrict government buildings with some basic safeguards in place.

Urban infrastructure sharing is to be mandated by the Department of Telecom (DoT), which is confident that the number of highly visible and ugly iron-and-steel phone towers will down in Delhi, for instance, from 7,000 to about 5,000 once the plan gets underway.

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