Gearing up to launch fourth generation (4G) mobile operations, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL) has inked a tower-sharing agreement with ATC India. An independent tower firm, ATC India, has a portfolio of 11,000 towers across the country.
However, the financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"Our relationship with ATC will accelerate the rollout of these services (4G) across India,” said RJIL Managing Director Sanjay Mashruwala.
“There is considerable pent up demand for data and 4G has tremendous growth potential…. We believe this will strengthen our foothold as the leading independent tower company in India,” said B. Ramanand ATC’s Chief Operating Officer.
RJIL, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries Ltd, is currently testing 4G services across 10 locations in the country. The tests are being conducted on 4G on WiFi (a technology that enables wireless access of Internet), and 4G over optical fibre cable.
RJIL, which holds 1800 MHz spectrum across 14 circles and 2300 MHz across all the 22 circles, plans to launch services by October or December this year. In addition to telecom services, it is also planning to offer TV channels on its fourth generation (4G) broadband network.
Similar pacts Earlier, RJIL entered into similar agreements with various telecom operators and infrastructure providers in the country.
The company, controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, had earlier signed an intra- and inter-city agreement for optical fibre with Reliance Communications. The agreement was for 1.20 lakh fibre-pair km of optical fibre and 500,000 fibre-pair km respectively. It also signed a 45,000 tower-sharing deal with RCom.
RJIL had signed an agreement with Bharti Airtel for infrastructure sharing and another to share 42,000 telecom towers with Viom Networks.
Shares in RIL ended up 0.07 per cent at ₹959.45 apiece on a strong BSE, which ended up 0.60 per cent.