Delhi: Poor phone signal? Thieves targeting mobile tower parts could be to blame

In 2023, the national nodal officer of Airtel, one of the largest telecom service providers in the country, filed a complaint with the Delhi Police that its signal transmission was going haywire at many places in the Capital. Turns out, it was because Remote Radio Units (RRUs) and Base Band Units (BBU), components attached to the company's towers, worth crores, were being stolen. A senior police officer, involved in the probe, explained that this equipment is a vital component of mobile towers: "BBUs receive signals from mobile users via antenna, which transfers the signal to RRUs for further processing of…