Reliance Jio Infocomm has signed a tower-sharing agreement with Tower Vision, which will enable the telecom unit of Reliance Industries to provide faster and cheaper data and voice services.“The deal is for sharing 8,400 towers of Tower Vision,” the companies said in a joint statement.
It is the fifth tower-sharing agreement by Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio. Earlier, the company had tied up with Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Viom Towers and ATC India.
"We are continuing to build wide coverage of high speed 4G networks through a combination of towers that we are constructing on our own and those that we are renting from quality tower infrastructure partners," said Sanjay Mashruwala, managing director at Reliance Jio.
Reliance Jio is looking to lease about 70,000 towers and put up 30,000 of its own as it targets to launch fourth-generation voice and data services in the October-December quarter.
The company owns all-India airwaves in the 2,300 MHz band since May 2010, but it has not rolled out the service yet. But it needs to do so by May 2015, as per the license obligation. Reliance Jio also bought airwaves in the 1,800 MHz band in an auction held in February 2014.
Reliance Jio's eagerly anticipated data services are likely to bring down data prices. This, in turn, may lead to another tariff war among various service providers.