The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) on Tuesday reaffirmed that the industry continues to be compliant even with the new emission norms proposed by the DoT which are one of the most stringent in the world.

The telecom industry lobby said that the telecom Industry in India has always been proactive to adopt and ensure compliance with the International safety standards on EMF exposure limits, upholding public health and environment as its foremost concern.

As early as 2008, the industry alongside DoT took the lead in setting up standards for EMF emissions, the best standards operational in the world were reviewed and the ICNIRP standards were adopted as they provided the safest margins to ensure no adverse effects on the health of the people, it said.

COAI said that recently, when the Inter Ministerial Committee, as a precautionary measure, recommended that the standards be lowered to 1/10^th of the present ICNIRP standards (which is considered to be the safest in the world with over 90% of the countries having adopted the ICNIRP guidelines); despite there being no scientific evidence stating any increased health benefit from the proposed directive, the industry has gone an extra mile to ensure compliance with the same.

“Being sensitive to the concerns of the people, the industry voluntarily undertook proactive measures and underwent a massive transition in its network infrastructure which was redesigned significantly to meet the prescribed norms. He further reiterated that considering the scarce spectrum resources available in India compared to the other countries, population density and traffic it was an extremely difficult task in itself”, said Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI.

He assured that the industry has always been compliant of the exposure limits and will continue to work actively along with the DoT to ensure that compliance is maintained in this area. We are hopeful that our partnership with the government will continue in this sphere to assuage the concerns that the public have regarding the health effects of EMF emissions from mobile towers and ensure that they are informed of the true scientific facts on the matter and be assured that their safety is being safeguarded with utmost sincerity and priority by the industry.