Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is looking to tie up with private telecom infrastructure companies to manage its tower and optical fibre cable network across the country.
It is believed that the private player will be asked to manage, operate and maintain the operator?s infrastructure across the country. The private partner will also be allowed to further rent out capacity to other players.
According to R.K. Upadhyay, CMD, BSNL, ?Our new business unit is finalising the plan. We hope to float the request for the proposal in a month. This is one of the new revenue streams for BSNL going forward.?
Currently, BSNL has nearly 70,000 towers and about 0.625 milliom route kilometers of optical fibre cables across the country. The new plan is expected to reduce the cost of owning this infrastructure.
According to Upadhyay, once a private player takes over the mobile towers, the cost of maintaining the sites, including security, air-conditioning and diesel will be borne by the partner. BSNL will continue to own the towers and also occupy one slot of the tower. The partner is likely to be chosen on a circle by circle basis.
On leasing out optical fibre cables, Upadhyay said that the cables will be lit and not dark, the difference being that the former is ready-to-use without any additional investment by the operator who rents out capacity. However, this will not be done for last mile access through local loop unbundling.
