Call it a mobile tower in fancy dress. Or simply call it a towering tree.

Jamshedpur citizens may have noticed a new 35-metre tall palm tree beside Centre for Excellence, near Jubilee Park.

This palm tree is actually a 4G mobile tower being set up by Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, a Mukesh Ambani led telecom and broadband company. More are in the offing, making Jamshedpur, according to Reliance Jio Infocomm officials, the first city in India to get camouflage phone towers.

It is a tribute to the dense green cover of the country's first planned industrial city that the telecom major decided that conventional cellphone towers would decidedly stick out in the landscape.

Reliance Jio Infocomm, which has the licence to set up 4G towers across India, has decided to install several towers disguised as palm or pine trees keeping the green cover of the city in mind.

So far, some 4G towers in the city are doubling up as high-mast lights in roundabouts. Camouflaged trees will doubtless be a tourist attraction, at least initially.

"It's an established trend in western countries to landscape mobile towers to gel with the ambience," said Prabhat Sinha, mentor, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, Jharkhand.

"There, mobile towers are mostly disguised as trees suitable to the area, mainly for aesthetic reasons, keeping existing green cover in mind. Towers, technically known as ground-based masts or GBM, seem to hamper the look in a green area, which is why Reliance Jio Infocomm tried to come up with camouflage towers in Jamshedpur, which also has a large green cover," Sinha added.

The tower beside the Centre for Excellence, which is almost ready, is covered by Plaster of Paris (POP), with rinds similar to a palm tree. It is crowned with fronds made of plastic and cloth-like material.

Reliance Jio Infocomm officials said they had installed 150 4G towers in the city. Fifteen new ones will be camouflage towers. "We will try and have a pine or a fern like structure, which looks greener," Sinha said.

In the West, palm, fir, cactus and fern trees apart, cellphone towers are also disguised as tree trunks, flagpoles, church bell towers and sculptures.

Have you seen a camouflaged mobile tower abroad? Tell ttkhand@abpmail.com