In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Milind Deora, Minister of State for Communications and IT said that Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) plans to lease out the spare capacity of its 60,000 towers to private operators. This is aimed at unlocking the value of its infrastructure assets.
He added that in so far, the operator has shared 1,072 towers with private players.
BSNL reportedly hopes to salvage its financial situation to a certain degree by unlocking the value of its idle tower assets with tower sharing.
Also, private operators stand to benefit from this, keeping in mind that BSNL has infrastructure all over the country. So, such companies save on the cost of setting up infrastructure, as they would lease out the assets from BSNL instead.
