Stakeholders converge over safety of BTS
By Emmanuel Elebeke
Since the debut of the Global System for Mobile communications, GSM in Nigeria, one of its major equipment, the Base Transmission Service, BTS, has come to represent different things to different people.
While it is a communications infrastructure for telecom operators, it has also remained a means to wealth for land owners who would hike the value of the piece of land where the operators would rent to erect them.
This latter group of people even scout for operators who would come to site base stations in their properties due to huge financial benefit coming with it.
However, in recent times, much more people are getting hooked up with the rumour that base stations emit electro magnetic radiation that is injurious to human health. The EMR is even said to be more dangerous when the base station is sited near residential places.
This situation, according to many Nigeria telecom operators, has not only make the deployment of base stations more costly but also difficult to convince people to give out their lands.
Operators have cited this as one of the reasons for the lingering poor quality of service experienced by consumers. Another challenge according to the operators, is the activities of hoodlums, who make it difficult for them to maintain these base stations. This has come to contribute in hampering the growth of telecommunications networks and as well provide migraine to those monitoring growth in the sector.
This could be perhaps why the publishers of one of the fledging ICT magazines eBusiness Life Communications Limited, organised industry stakeholders to discuss the issues of BTS safety. The forum which theme was BTS, Our Health and Environment” was in collaboration with the Consumer Affairs Department of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC.
The idea of the forum according to the organisers was to bring all stakeholders together to throw more light on this raging controversy surrounding the safety of BTS and to get the public better informed and educated about the issue.
In his presentation, the chairman of the occasion and President of association of telecommunications companies of Nigeria, ATCON, Engr. Titi Omo- Ettu, refuted the claim that telecom mast poses a threat to human health because of the radiation that comes from it.
According to him, it is wrong for people to believe that the closeness of telecom mast to residential could cause harm.
Omo-Ettu, a telecoms Engineer, also noted that before base stations and masts are erected there are always engineers who assemble all engineering analysis. He also said that traditionally, telecom masts are erected at a distance of 3 meters away from the reach of people.
According to him, “for people to say that mast on the roof tops are risky is untrue because engineers usually carry out every engineering analysis before erecting them. So, they do not create problems. By engineering design, the radiation from the mast has been taken care of before and during installation. We agree the problem are there but we have taken care of it and engineers are very much conscious of it,” he said.
However he gave reasons for the proliferation of mast in Nigerian cities saying that chief among them was that collocation was never considered at the initial stage when telecommunications was taking off in the country.
He assured that the problem would soon be over, as the operators would have no choice than to link them with fiber optics that is currently being deployed across the country.
He challenged the NCC as the industry regulator to show concern by ensuring that all engineering projects of operators is of good quality and of standards.
On his part, the President, national telecommunications subscribers of Nigeria, Mr. Deulu Ogubanjo said that even if the BTS were to contain health hazzard emission, “we can’t stop using mobile phones, given the huge benefits we derive from it. There must be a cost for every technology” he added.
For him, there must be a strategy to check the negative effects of BTS if any exists.
Meanwhile, panelists at the forum were charged to come up with a research work on the issue concerning BTS. Special appeal was also made to government and to the operators to fund such research to further the discussion and take it to logical conclusion, rather than relying on the old studies of world health organization, WHO.
Participants at the occasion used the platform to call on government to put up deliberate policies that would accelerate the process to ensure safety of lives.
In her welcome address, Publisher of the Magazine, Mrs. Ufoma Emuophedraro said the last 10 years, especially since the advent of GSM, have been quite remarkable for the telecoms industry.
She said that part of the fall out of this revolution is the increased deployment of Base Transceiver Station (BTS) popularly known as Base Stations.
“What we are here to do today is to demystify Base Stations, we want to reduce the fears of consumers and educate Nigerians about the BTS and our environment; we also want to use this as a platform for interaction on how best to ensure a mutually beneficial relationship between the consumers, all the strata of government and the private sector in the placement of base stations infrastructure,” she said.
She charged operators to use the forum as a platform to express their challenges and visions. She also urged government to outline their plans to ensure a safe telecommunication environment.
