Reliance Jio inks sharing pact with American Tower Corp

Reliance Jio, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries Ltd, today signed an agreement with American Tower Corporation for utilising its mobile towers for the RJIL telecom network. ATC has 11,000 towers in India.

"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 Ltd managing director Sanjay Mashruwala said in a statement.

"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, the 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.

Under the deal with Bharti Airtel, RJIL will have access to about 82,000 mobile towers, while the agreement with RCom will provide it access to about 45,000 towers.

The recent deal with Viom Network gives it access to 42,000 mobile towers (See: Reliance Jio signs agreement to use Viom Networks' 42,000 towers).

RJIL is expected to launch 4G services in July-September quarter. The company holds pan-India broadband wireless access spectrum that can be used for 4G services. Besides, it won airwaves in the 1800 Mhz 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.