Indian operator Reliance Jio Infocomm has signed a tower sharing agreement with local infrastructure provider Bharti Infratel across the country.

In December last year, Reliance Jio Infocomm announced an infrastructure sharing agreement with Bharti Airtel, Bharti Group’s operator subsidiary. The two agreed to share their inter and intra city fibre networks, submarine cable networks, towers and internet broadband services. At the time, they added that they will also look for other opportunities to share assets in the future.

Reliance Jio, which holds a Pan India Unified License, said that the agreement is in line with an earlier comprehensive telecom infrastructure sharing arrangement between the two firms, which is aimed at avoiding duplication of infrastructure in order to preserve its capital and minimise the firm’s environmental footprint.

“The agreement will help us with the faster roll out of our services across the country,” commented Sanjay Mashruwala, managing director at Reliance Jio.

D S Rawat, CEO at Bharti Infratel added that the firm’s vast footprint and high network uptime levels will offer faster access to market and lower operational costs to Reliance Jio.

“The agreement would also benefit our existing customers with lower rentals and energy charges as a result of additional sharing,” he added.