Thaindian News

New Delhi, Aug 31 (IANS) Telecom majors Reliance Communications (RCom) and Aircel are on the verge of signing a $300-million agreement for sharing telecom infrastructure like towers, sources close to the deal said Monday.
“The deal will offer RCom a revenue upside of over Rs.1,500 crore. It will cover end-to-end telecom infrastructure agreement for towers, voice carriage and bulk bandwidth,” said a person privy to the talks.

According to the agreement, the sharing of infrastructure will be across circles where Aircel has rolled out its telecom services and also includes new circles where the company expects to launch services.

RCom, India’s second largest telecom operator with a subscriber base of nearly 80 million, will execute this agreement through its tower subsidiary Reliance Infratel in which it holds a 95 percent stake.

The deal will also give Aircel access to Reliance Infratel’s nationwide tower infrastructure comprising 50,000 sites and the extensive optic cable fibre backbone of RCom’s pan-India telecom network.

The agreement follows last month’s deal signed between RCom and Etisalat DB, earlier known as Swan Telecom, worth over Rs.10,000 crore.

Earlier this week, Reliance Infratel and S Tel signed an infrastructure agreement for sharing telecom towers, transmission for BTS sites and fibre backbone for intercity connectivity.

Reliance Communications will execute the agreement through its tower subsidiary Reliance Infratel. The pact covers six circles - Orissa, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Northeast, Assam and Jammu and Kashmir where the telecom operator plans to roll out its GSM services soon.

S Tel, a new telecom operator in the lndian marketplace, has acquired a Unified Access Services License (UASL) and spectrum to operate in the six circles.

Reliance Infratel is also pursuing such deals with other telecom operators. An RCom spokesperson declined to comment.