Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio to share infrastructure

Telecom service providers Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio Infocomm have concluded a comprehensive telecom infrastructure-sharing arrangement under which they will share infrastructure created by both parties, a statement by Bharti Airtel said here Tuesday.

The agreement 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 statement said.

In future, the arrangement could 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,” it said.

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.
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