Reliance Jio (RJio), the telecom arm of Reliance Industries (RIL), will increase its tower infrastructure as the company gears up to roll out 4G services by 2015 end.
The company has over 75,000 towers servicing network. RIL owns 30,000 towers, more than several leading tower companies like GTL Infra, while the rest have been leased/rented from tower companies. “When we eventually roll out our 4G services by the year end, we will look to address 80% of our market. We will look to increase our tower infrastructure as we expand our services,” said Anshuman Thakur, senior VP at RIL.
Thakur, however, didn’t reveal the number of towers the company is planning to expand to in the short term, after rolling out its services. The company would look to lease tower infrastructure wherever possible, and build its own towers at places which are void of such infrastructure. According to a recent Credit Suisse report, RJio has built 28,000-30,000 towers comprising a mix of poles and full ground based towers on its own.
“Of 70,000 sites at the launch, about 45% would be on RJio’s own towers. Among the third-party towers, RJio appears to be preferring RCom towers (probably due to favourable commercials). From our discussions, we understand 30,000 towers of RCom have been taken by RJio. Viom’s management said RJio has installed sites and pays rentals on 4,500 towers of Viom. RJio has also identified 2,500 more sites for rollout,” the report said.