Firming up its plans to launch 4G services in the country, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL) has signed an infrastructure agreement with Indus Towers. This follows a spate of similar agreements that RJIL, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, has entered into in the recent past.
Indus Towers – a three-way joint venture among Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular – has a portfolio of 1.14 lakh telecom towers across 15 circles.
“The agreement does not specify the number of towers. RJIL has the freedom to choose the towers that are suitable for its operations from the existing portfolio of towers,” said Sameer Sinha, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Indus Towers.
The towers would be leased out at prevailing market rates, he added.
“We are building our network through a combination of infrastructure networks that we are creating on our own and those that we are renting from quality partners. We already have such tower sharing agreements with all the major players in India, and this relationship with Indus Towers will further accelerate the rollout of our services,” said Sanjay Mashruwala, Managing Director at RJIL.
“Our agreement with Reliance Jio will also bring benefits to our existing customers in the form of lower rentals and energy costs. At the same time, the infrastructure sharing will help in avoiding duplication of towers and benefit the environment through lower power and fuel consumption,” said BS Shantharaju, Chief Executive Officer at Indus Towers.
Other 4G deals RJIL holds spectrum in the 1800 MHz band across 14 circles and the 2300 MHz band in 22 circles and is capable of offering 4G services. The company is getting ready to launch 4G mobile services in a phased manner, starting this year.
Last week, RJIL entered into a similar agreement with GTL Infrastructure for about 27,800 towers, and in June, signed an agreement with Ascend Telecom for more than 4,500 towers. It also entered into similar agreements with Tower Vision for 8,400 towers in May, ATC India for 11,000 towers in April, Viom Networks for 42,000 towers and Bharti Infratel for 36,000 telecom towers in March.
RJIL also signed deals with Reliance Communications for 45,000 towers in June 2013. It had also entered into agreements with Bharti Airtel for comprehensive telecom infrastructure sharing (December 2013) and data connectivity (April 2013).
rajesh.kurup@thehindu.co.in