Reliance Jio in tower sharing agreement with American Towers for 4G rollout

Telecom arm of Reliance Industries Limited, RJIL, Monday signed an agreement with American Tower Corporation for utilising the mobile towers for its telecom network.

"...we are committed to creating a cutting edge network for high speed 4G. Our relationship with ATC will accelerate the roll-out of these services across India," Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited Managing Director, Sanjay Mashruwala, said in a statement.

ATC has a portfolio of 11,000 towers in India.

"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.

With this agreement, total available towers for RJIL to roll out its network would reach about 1,80,000. The company already has an agreement with Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Viom Network to utilise their infrastructure.

As per the deal with Bharti Airtel, RJIL will have access to about 82,000 mobile towers, while the agreement with RCom deal will provide it access to about 45,000 towers. The recent deal with Viom Networks gives it access to 42,000 mobile towers.

RJIL is expected to launch 4G services in July-September quarter.

RJIL holds pan-India broadband wireless access spectrum that can be used for 4G services. Besides, it won airwaves in the 1800MHz band, widely known as 2G spectrum, which is also being used for 4G services worldwide.

The company will use both available 4G technologies to provide services.

RJIL is the first telecom operator in the country to get a unified licence for all 22 service areas in India. The unified licence, which it received in October, will allow RJIL to offer all telecom services, including voice telephony.