In what could be the first active infrastructure sharing arrangement in the country, Russian communications major Sistema-controlled Shyam Telecom is learnt to be in advanced talks with Reliance Telecom Infrastructure Ltd (RTIL), Reliance Communications’ hived off tower arm, for a Rs 5,000-crore deal spread over 10 years.
As per the arrangement, Shyam Telecom will offer mobile services by riding on RTIL’s infrastructure—both active and passive—for 10 years. Shyam was recently allotted CDMA start-up spectrum across 12 circles, covering 16 states.
This deal will enable the CDMA operator to launch operations without setting up its own network. The Shyam-RTIL model could be the first of more such deals as new entrants try to save on time taken to set up and roll out networks across the country.
Other new players such as Datacom, Unitech, S Tel and Loop Telecom are also learnt to be exploring such business models, which offers them ready-to-use quality telecom infrastructure, which in turn, enables them to reduce their time-to-market and accelerate their network deployment. Industry experts say that roll-out dates can be advanced by as much as 8 - 12 months if new players adopt this model.
The entry of several new players, which opens the potential for many such infrastructure sharing deals in the coming months may also result in stand-alone tower firms such as RTIL, Indus (a tower JV between Bharti, Vodafone and Idea) and Bharti Infratel justifying their high valuations.
Read more in The Economic Times article.
