MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel Limited (“Bharti”) and Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (“Reliance Jio”) today announced a comprehensive telecom infrastructure sharing arrangement under which they will share infrastructure created by both parties. This 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.
The cooperation is aimed at avoiding duplication of infrastructure, wherever possible, and to preserve capital and the environment. This will also provide redundancy in order to ensure seamless services to customers of the respective parties.
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. The pricing would be at ‘arm’s length’, based on the prevailing market rates.
As part of this arrangement, Bharti and Reliance Jio have already announced an agreement under which Bharti has provided capacity on its i2i submarine cable to Reliance Jio. About Bharti’s Infrastructure:
Bharti Infratel, a subsidiary of Bharti, is one of the largest tower infrastructure providers in India with 35,376 towers in 11 telecom circles across India. Bharti Infratel has 42% equity interest in Indus Towers. Indus Towers has 112,144 towers in 15 telecom Circles across India. Bharti’s national long distance network provides pan-India reach with 175,705 Rkms of optic fibre. Its global network runs across 225,000 Rkms, covering 50 countries and 5 continents.
This includes ownership of i2i submarine cable system connecting Chennai to Singapore, consortium ownership of SMW4 submarine cable system connecting Chennai and Mumbai to Singapore and Europe, and new cable system investments like Asia America Gateway (AAG), India Middle East & Western Europe (IMEWE), Unity, EIG (Europe India Gateway) and East Africa Submarine System (EASSy). It also has terrestrial express connectivity to neighboring countries including Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh and China.
