Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJIL) has signed a tower sharing deal with the telecom infrastructure service provider, ATC India.
Under the terms of the agreement, RJIL will utilise the telecom tower infrastructure of ATC India to launch 4G services across the country. At present, ATC has a portfolio of 11,000 towers in India.
RJIL, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, already has agreements with Reliance Communications for sharing the latter?s inter-city and intra-city optic fibre infrastructure of about 120,000 km and 500,000 km respectively and 45,000 towers.
“We at Reliance Jio, want to provide innovative and empowering products, services and content to every Indian. To this end, we are committed to creating a cutting edge network for high speed 4G. Our relationship with ATC will accelerate the rollout of these services across India, stated Sanjay Mashruwala, managing director, RJIL in a press release.
?There is considerable pent up demand for data and 4G has tremendous growth potential. We, at ATC India, are delighted to offer our countrywide network infrastructure to help Reliance Jio in its aggressive nationwide roll-out. This master contract recognizes ATC?s high level of customer service and operational efficiency. We believe this will strengthen our foothold as the leading independent tower company in India.? said ATC?s chief operating officer, B. Ramanand in the same press release.
Earlier, RJIL had also struck similar infrastructure sharing deals with tower companies including Bharti Infratel Limited and Viom Networks.
In March 2014, RJIL signed a master services agreement with Bharti Infratel Limited. Under the agreement, RJIL would utilise the telecom tower infrastructure of Bharti Infratel to launch 4G services across the country. As per the agreement, the pricing would be at ?arm?s length,? based on prevailing market rates.
Similarly, RJIL also has a tower sharing agreement with Viom Towers for utilising the latter?s network of 42,000 towers.
