Reliance Jio to use ATC towers

Signs four tower-sharing agreements in a year with RCom, Bharti Airtel, Viom Networks and ATC

To launch its services across India, Reliance Jio Infocomm has entered into an agreement with American Tower Company (ATC) to utilise the latter’s telecom towers.

“We are committed to creating a cutting edge network for high speed fourth generation (4G). Our relationship with ATC will accelerate the rollout of these services across India,” Sanjay Mashruwala, managing director, Reliance Jio, said in a statement on Monday.

ATC, which is an independent tower company, has about 11,000 facilities in India.

This is the fourth deal Reliance Jio has signed for sharing telecom towers. It has earlier signed similar agreements with Reliance Communications (RCom), Bharti Airtel, and Viom Networks.

The four tower-sharing agreements that Reliance Jio has signed so far would provide the Mukesh Ambani firm access to about 180,000 towers across the country. However, Reliance Jio has not disclosed details of how many towers it would actually share for its 4G services. In June 2013, Reliance Jio had signed its first tower-sharing agreement with RCom, in which it was projected to share about 45,000 towers of RCom’s 50,000 towers across the country. The deal was estimated at about Rs 12,000 crore.

In December 2013, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel had signed an agreement to share telecom infrastructure. Besides sharing the towers of Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel will also use each other's optic fibre networks. The deal would give Reliance Jio access to about 82,000 mobile towers.

Reliance Jio has also signed an agreement with Viom Networks to share telecom towers. Viom Networks has 45,000 towers across the country.

According to analysts, the Mukesh Ambani firm is likely to rent out about 70,000 towers and would built about 25,000-30,000 mobile towers of its own. The company is expected to launch 4G services in the last quarter of this calendar year.

"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," ATC's Chief Operating Officer, B Ramanand said.

Meanwhile, Reliance Jio has also signed agreements with RCom and Bharti Airtel to sharing intra-city and inter-city fibre optic networks. Rcom's intra-city optic fiber network is spread over about 500,000 kilometres across 300 cities and towns.

Reliance Jio has 20MHz of spectrum in 2,300MHz band in all 22 telecom circles, and it has acquired 1,800MHz spectrum in a few selected circles. The company intends to use all its spectrum for 4G or long-term-evolution (LTE) services.