4.6.14

Reliance Jio inks another Tower Pact

Reliance Jio Infocomm signed a tower sharing deal with Ascend Telecom Infrastructure, which will help the telecom unit of Reliance Industries roll out its much-awaited high speed data and voice services faster and at a lower cost across India.
The deal is for sharing 4,500 towers of Ascend Towers, Rel Jio said in a statement to the BSE after market hours. Last month, it signed a similar deal to share 8,400 of Tower Vision's towers. Ascend Telecom is backed by New Silk Route Growth Capital, IL&FS and the TVS Group.
This is Mukesh Ambani-owned Jio's sixth tower sharing agreement after having tied up with Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Viom Towers and ATC India for using their respective tower infrastructures. Jio has also tied up with Bharti and Reliance Communications to lease their optic fibre networks, among other passive infrastructure. “It's our network coverage footprint that will give customers geographical freedom they need to avail out high-speed services,“ Sanjay Mashruwala, MD at Reliance Jio, said in the statement as the company continues to rent from tower infrastructure providers.
Reliance Jio plans to lease around 70,000 towers and put up 30,000 of its own, including smaller cell sites on single poles, as it aims to launch fourth-generation voice and data services in the October-December quarter. The company owns pan-India airwaves in the 2300 MHz band since May 2010, but it is yet to roll out service. It must do so by May 2015 as per the licence obligation at the time of sale. It also bought airwaves in the 1800 MHz band in a government auction in February .
On both bands, it plans to launch fourth-generation data services along with second-generation voice service on the 1800 MHz band.

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