Reliance Jio Infocomm has signed a tower sharing agreement with ATC India to help the operator accelerate rollout of 4G services at lower costs.
Under the partnership, Reliance Jio will use ATC India's 11,000 telecom towers spread across the country to launch its 4G services.
According to the Economic Times, Reliance Jio plans to lease around 70,000 towers. It will also put up 30,000 of its own, including smaller cell sites on single poles, as the operator aims to launch 4G services as early as September.
Reliance Jio acquired pan-India airwaves in the 2300-MHz band in May 2010, and bought additional 1800-MHz spectrum in a government auction in February, but has yet to roll out services. It has a little over a year to meet its license obligations and start commercial service by May 2015.
In a bid to hasten the pace of its launch, lower capital costs and avoid duplication of infrastructure wherever possible, Reliance Jio has been signing up infrastructure-sharing agreements with various telecom operators which already have passive infrastructure in place, including Reliance Infratel, Bharti Airtel and Viom Networks.