Reliance Jio and Tower Vision have just shook hands over a agreement which will see mobile tower infrastructure being shared by the two companies. It was only this last week that controversy over the Department of Telecom’s (DoT) decision to award a unified license to Reliance Jio broke out, with the Comptroller and Auditor General questioning the organization for permitting the operator to acquire pan-India high speed Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum without participating in the auction for it.
The bone of contention which is the unified license covering 22 service areas, can be used by Reliance Jio to launch its 4G network. This has to do with the fact that the company’s BWA and Internet Service Provider (ISP) permits not inclusive of satellite phones services, are now under a single license. The operator did sign a Rs 12,000-crore deal with Reliance Communications over the latter’s telecom tower setup and optic fiber network.
We’re assuming that agreement didn’t involve its 4G roll-out plans then. The newly announced deal with Tower Vision is specifically meant to allow Reliance Jio to launch the next generation network by using their own infrastructure as well as partnering with a suitable name in the business. The former boasts of having 8,400 towers all across India under its banner. These cover urban areas and semi-urban regions in the country.
Reliance Jio has tied up with Tower Vision under a Master Service Agreement (MSA) for tower sharing since building such infrastructure would be a proposal that may take years and an excessive amount of investment capital.