Indian giant Bharti Airtel and new entrant Reliance Jio Infocomm have agreed to share some of their infrastructure assets in an effort to cut costs.
These assets include an optic fibre network, submarine cable networks, towers and internet broadband…
Indian giant Bharti Airtel and new entrant Reliance Jio Infocomm have agreed to share some of their infrastructure assets in an effort to cut costs.
These assets include an optic fibre network, submarine cable networks, towers and internet broadband services.
“The cooperation is aimed at avoiding duplication of infrastructure, wherever possible, and to preserve capital and the environment. This will also provide redundancy in order to ensure seamless services to customers of the respective parties,” Bharti said in a statement.
The agreement could be extended to roaming on 2G, 3G and 4G. Pricing will be at arm’s length, the company said.
In late October, Reliance Jio, which is the telecoms unit of conglomerate Reliance Industries (RI), became the first company to secure a unified licence across India’s 22 service areas.
The unified licence – which allows operators to offer all services under a single licence – further asserted conglomerate RI’ entry into India’s saturated mobile market after securing a pan-Indian 4G licence in 2010.
In early April, RI and mobile operator Reliance Communications (RCom) agreed a fibre sharing deal, which marked a thawing of relations between the two brothers that own them. They later signed a Rs12bn (US$2.1bn) tower sharing agreement.
With these various agreements in place, Reliance Jio is expected to roll out services soon.
