India’s youngest mobile operator, Reliance Jio, is in talks to sign yet another tower sharing agreement, this time with state-owned telecoms services provider BSNL.
If the companies reach agreement, it would follow a spate of similar deals Jio sealed…
India’s youngest mobile operator, Reliance Jio, is in talks to sign yet another tower sharing agreement, this time with state-owned telecoms services provider BSNL.
If the companies reach agreement, it would follow a spate of similar deals Jio sealed in the past ten months.
Since June 2013, Reliance Jio has signed tower sharing contracts and wider infrastructure sharing contracts with a tower component with Reliance Communications (RCom), Viom Networks, Bharti Infrantel and its parent Bharti Airtel, and, most recently, American Tower’s local unit, ATC India.
The news that Jio is now also in discussions with BSNL was revealed in an interview Anupam Shrivastava, Director (Consumer Mobility) of BSNL, gave The Hindu Business Line.
Shrivastava said that talks with Reliance Jio are in final stages and that the state owned telco had offered Jio “a bulk deal whereby if they buy space on certain number of our towers we will give discounted rate”.
The agreement being discussed would also allow BSNL to rent access to any new towers Jio might decide to build in areas where the state owned telco does not currently have a presence.
A local report in March claimed that the telecoms ministry is planning to spin off BSNL’s more than 61,000 towers into a separate entity.
