Reliance Industry ltd's (RIl) telecom arm, Reliance Jio Infocomm and Bharti Airtel on Tuesday announced a comprehensive arrangement for sharing telecom infrastructure. The move came a day after Mukesh Ambani invited Sunil Bharti Mittal to join hands with Reliance Jio Infocomm for improving telecom network for 4G services in Punjab.
Both the companies in a joint statement said, "This arrangement will include optic fibre network inter and intra city, submarine cable networks, towers and internet broadband services and other such opportunities identified in the future."
Talking about the future potential of the arrangement, the statement added, "The arrangement could, in future, be extended to roaming on 2G, 3G and 4G, and any other mutually benefiting areas relating to telecommunication, including but not limited to jointly laying optic fibre or other forms of infrastructure services."
Reliance Jio Infocomm is the only company which has pan-India airwaves that can be used for 4G services very high speed wireless broadband services while Bharti Airtel is already the largest telecom operator in the country with a subscriber base of over 19 crore . Airtel offer all kinds telecom services, include 4G mobile broadband.
The statement also said, "The pricing would be at arm's length, based on the prevailing market rates." The arrangement will also provide redundancy in order to ensure seamless services to customers of the respective parties.
The co-operation is aimed at avoiding duplication of infrastructure, wherever possible, and to preserve capital and environment. Bharti and Reliance Jio are already in an agreement under which Bharti had provided capacity on its i2i submarine cable to Reliance Jio.
This is the second time Reliance Jio Infocomm has joined hands with another telecom operator. Earlier in April this year, Reliance Jio had signed a similar agreement Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications for sharing their existing and future telecom infrastructure. This deal was the first business deal between the two brothers since they split the Ambani empire in 2005. Soon, they followed it by another agreement in June on mobile tower sharing.
Meanwhile apart from sharing infrastructure, both Reliance Jio Infocomm and Airtel have laid down their extensive investment plans in Punjab. Reliance Jio announced its plan to invest Rs 2,500 crore in Punjab for rolling out its first digital infrastructure for 4G in the state. While Airtel plans to spend Rs 4,500 crore in the next five years towards expanding company's optic fiber network and 4G services in the state. Airtel plans to lay an additional 10,000 km of optic fiber across Punjab and introduce its high speed 4G long-term evolution (lTE) services across the state in the future.