Government Orders Mobile Network Access at Navi Mumbai Airport

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has stepped in to resolve a dispute over mobile network access at the new Navi Mumbai International Airport.

For months, private telecom companies including Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea had complained that they were not being allowed to install their own mobile network equipment inside the airport.

Instead, they were asked to use only the airport’s in-building network system, which operators said was very expensive and commercially unviable charges reportedly running into several lakhs per month for each company.

In response, the DoT has officially invoked the new Telecommunications Act, 2023 and related Right of Way (RoW) rules of 2024. The department clarified that the Navi Mumbai airport qualifies as a “public entity” under the law, and therefore must offer fair, transparent, non-discriminatory access to licensed telecom companies to deploy their own infrastructure.

Also Read: Eternal Partners with US Tech Giant OpenAI to Boost AI Integration on Zomato and Blinkit Platforms

In a letter to Adani Airport Holdings Ltd (AAHL) — the company operating the airport — the DoT instructed that telecom operators must be given RoW permissions to install cables, towers and equipment needed to run their 4G/5G networks.

This move is expected to fix the poor mobile coverage inside the airport terminals, which had left many passengers dependent on airport Wi-Fi or with no mobile signal at all.

With the airport gearing up for full operations, the government’s directive aims to ensure that passengers and staff get strong, reliable mobile network signals right from the start.