Reliance Jio, RCom sign third agreement

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of India's largest private sector company Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), and Reliance Communications (RCom) have signed their third infrastructure sharing agreement.

Under the latest agreement, RJIL will use RCom's intra-city optic fibre infrastructure. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

RJIL will utilise RCom's nationwide intra-city fibre network for its 4G services rollout across the country. The agreement is based on arm's length pricing at prevailing market prices, RCom said.

RCom's intra-city optic fibre network extends to nearly 500,000 fibre-pair kilometres, across the top 300 cities and towns in India.

RJIL had earlier signed a similar agreement with RCom for utilising up to 45,000 ground- and rooftop-based towers for its 4G services rollout.

The agreement provides for joint working arrangements to configure the scope of additional towers to be built at new locations to ensure deep penetration and seamless delivery of next generation services.

This agreement follows the inter-city optic fibre sharing agreement signed in April 2013 as part of a comprehensive framework of business co-operation between RJIL and RCom.

In February, RJIL won spectrum in the 1800 MHz brand across 14 circles for Rs11,054 crore, which the company intends to use for digital services and enhance in-building coverage.