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Journalism of Courage
One of the country’s stellar scientific tools for radio astronomy is facing earthly problems in its celestial quest. Authorities fear that a high-frequency tower being put up by Airtel may come in the way of the Giant Metre-Wave Telescope (GMRT) listening to signals from the farthest edge of the observable universe.
The National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), the institution behind the Rs 100-crore GMRT project, is crying foul about the Airtel Cellular Services tower. It is worried that the working of the GMRT—located at Narayangaon, about 150 km from Pune—would be seriously jeopardised in case the high-power Airtel tower becomes functional.
To be fair, Airtel did seek official permission from the NCRA to put up the tower within the GMRT range for better connectivity to its GSM mobile customers. But what has perhaps miffed the NCRA is Airtel’s decision to go ahead with the construction of the tower even before a final decision was taken.
While it is the the Wireless Planning Coordination Committee under the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) that gives final clearance to any wireless technology project, it cannot do so in case of the GMRT. For any project within 25-km radius of the GMRT, the DoT-affiliated agency has to first get a nod from the NCRA.
Prof Anantha Krishnan, GMRT Director and senior professor at the NCRA, is worried. ‘‘Airtel is planning to put up a mobile station here and the work seems to have begun, although we are yet to give the NoC,’’ he said. The negotiations are still going on as the NCRA needs detailed technical information about the tower and the frequency of operation, he added.
Asked why they were entertaining Airtel in the first place, Krishnan said any technology operating above GMRT’s frequency of 1600 MHz can be considered. ‘‘In any case, we still need to scrutinise it before any permission is given,’’ clarified Krishnan.
For instance, Krishnan points out that the two BSNL towers at Junnar and Manchar have been okayed as they operate at 1800 MHz on the CorDect technology.
Though Airtel officials admit that their tower is coming up at Narayangaon, they feel the scientists’ concerns are premature. ‘‘As of now, it’s just a physical structure with no reception or transmission of any signals,’’ said a spokesperson from its corporate head office in New Delhi. The tower, he said, was supposed to work on a frequency band of 1800 MHz.
But why did Airtel begin work on the tower without the mandatory NoC from NCRA? Airtel, said the spokesperson, held preliminary talks with the NCRA but the discussions couldn’t proceed as the NCRA sought a number of technical details, which would now be provided by their vendor Motorola Inc.
As a way out, Dr Govind Swarup, founder of the GMRT, has a simple solution. ‘‘It’s better that mobiles are banned in Narayangaon since the nature of our work is very scientific and extremely sensitive.’’ Krishnan agrees. ‘‘The government has spent a lot of money on GMRT. Although development should not be curtailed, it should be judicious.’’
Right now, the telescope can listen to the universe speak at frequencies as low as 150 MHz. If efforts to touch 74 and 50 MHz are successful, the GMRT would become world’s most powerful radio telescope in metre wave length.
Interestingly, Dr Swarup had chosen Narayangaon as the GMRT’s venue because it had minimum radio noise. At the same time it was close to the industrial and educational infrastructure of Pune and Mumbai. Narayangaon’s other advantage was its geographical location—sufficiently north of the geo-magnetic equator vis-a-vis latitude which, in turn, provides a reasonably quiet ionosphere for better observation.
