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Firming up its plans to launch telecom services in the country, Reliance Jio Infocomm, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), has inked a telecom tower-sharing agreement with Bharti Infratel. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
Terms of agreement Reliance Jio will use Bharti Infratel’s towers to launch services across the country. Under the terms of the agreement, pricing will be based on prevailing market rates, the company said in a statement.
“This agreement is in line with our earlier comprehensive telecom infrastructure-sharing arrangement with Bharti Airtel, aimed at avoiding duplication of infrastructure wherever possible, and to preserve capital and the environment. The agreement will help us with a faster rollout of our services across the country,” said Reliance Jio Managing Director Sanjay Mashruwala.
According to Bharti Infratel Chief Executive Officer DS Rawat: “Our vast footprint and high network uptime levels will offer significant synergies of faster access to market and lower operational costs. The agreement will also benefit our existing customers with lower rentals and energy charges as a result of additional sharing”.
Bharti Infratel, a subsidiary of the country’s largest telecom operator, Bharti Airtel, has more than 82,000 telecom towers. Of these, the company owns about 35,000; the rest are through its 42 per cent equity interest in Indus Towers. In April last year, the two companies signed an international data connectivity agreement, wherein Bharti Airtel will provide Reliance Jio data capacity on its i2i submarine cable.
Reliance Jio Infocomm, which holds 800 MHz spectrum across 14 Circles and 2300 MHz across 22 circles, plans to launch services by October or December this year. In addition to telecom services, the company is planning to offer TV channels on its fourth generation (4G) broadband network.
Similar pact with RCom Earlier, Reliance Jio had inked a similar agreement with Reliance Communications to utilise up to 45,000 ground and rooftop-based towers. Prior to that, the companies had signed an inter-city optic fibre sharing agreement.
Reliance Industries Ltd, Reliance Jio’s parent company, had earlier joined a consortium of global telecom companies to set up a submarine cable system linking Malaysia and Singapore to the Middle East. The sub-sea cable system is expected to carry commercial traffic by 2014-end.
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