The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will soon mandate the deployment of solar powered mobile towers in the North-Eastern Region (NER). The plan of looking for alternate energy sources to operate mobile towers is due to the high network coverage gaps in the NER areas such as Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Manipur.

According to a report by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Arunachal Pradesh has the highest coverage gap (55.9 per cent), followed by Meghalaya (38.1 per cent), Mizoram (32.3 per cent) and Manipur (24.3 per cent).

Earlier, DoT had set strict green targets for the telecom operators where they were required to reduce diesel consumption and run 50 per cent of their towers in rural areas and 20 per cent in urban areas on hybrid power by 2013. And by 2020, the operators will need to operate 75 per cent and 33 per cent of their towers in rural and urban zones respectively using hybrid energy solutions, which are a combination of grid power and renewable energy based on solar, wind, biomass or fuel cells.