The Hindu Business Line : Mobile operators to share infrastructure

A MEETING WITH THE MINISTER: The Minister for IT and Communications, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, with private cellular operators at a meeting in the Capital on Monday. - Ramesh Sharma

New Delhi , March 13

In a move that would bring down set-up costs, cellular operators today agreed to share infrastructure.

This was decided during a meeting between the telecom service providers and the Communication and IT Minister, Mr Dayanidhi Maran.

The infrastructure sharing would begin in Delhi and then in Mumbai, after which the model will be replicated in other parts of the country.

A working group under a Joint Secretary in the Department of Telecom will work out the modalities of the infrastructure sharing.

Panel on modalities

"A working group will be formed in the next two weeks to work out the modalities on infrastructure sharing. The group will be headed by a joint secretary in the Department of Telecom and would have officials of the service providers as members," Mr Maran said after the meeting.

Telecom industry captains including Mr Sunil Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director of Bharti Tele-Ventures, Mr Asim Ghosh, Managing Director of Hutchison India, Mr Sanjeev Aga, President of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and Director of Idea Cellular, Mr D. Singh, Vice-President of Reliance Infocomm, and senior executives from BSNL and MTNL were present at the meeting.

Single tower

Sharing infrastructure would mean having a single tower where all the operators can install their equipment. Each tower costs around Rs 35 lakh and GSM operators currently have about 6,000 towers in Delhi and Mumbai.

Though the existing towers may not be tampered with initially, the agreement will benefit companies wanting to set up new towers in future. Municipal authorities in Delhi had earlier raised objection to operators setting up towers in residential areas.

Mr T.V. Ramachandran, Director-General of COAI, said that the move would benefit cellular companies as it would reduce the cost in setting up a tower by a third.

Mr Maran said: "There are large parts in a city like Delhi that are not available for private mobile phone companies for putting up towers. By agreeing to share infrastructure, they will able to access the towers of State-owned companies."

He added: "By coming together they can also get approval to set up limited base stations in sensitive areas, which they can share. This will improve coverage, address the problem of call drop, and will benefit customers." While private players using GSM technology are already sharing infrastructure among themselves, it is for the first time GSM and CDMA players will use the same infrastructure in a big way. BSNL and MTNL are also part of the agreement.

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