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BSNL plans to share towers
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 09 July 2008, 19:21 IST
New Delhi: BSNL, India's largest public telephone company plans to come up with a new infrastructure sharing policy. Through this move Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) intends to reduce the operational cost. Company sources said that they are in final stage of drawing guidelines and will come up with new policy in a month. BSNL is currently looking to erect 12,000 towers in 23 circles.
BSNL has already decided the bidders with whom the company is going to share the towers and has split the contract for UP East, UP West, Jharkhand, Kolkata and Andhra Pradesh circles between these firms. "The work for rest of the circles will be completed in the next one month. In some circles where these companies have ready towers, BSNL will just become another tenant. However, that number is only about 2,000," sources told . "BSNL will also be able to use these towers for CDMA services whenever it is ready to launch them," sources added.
The company has more number of towers in 'B' category circles and villages where private operators have small foot print. Moreover, there is a rumor that other operators would rather use BSNL's towers than erect new towers to cut cost. Since setting up of new towers cost around Rs,37 to 40 lakhs, the sharing policy is expected to help BSNL to save a high amount of cost and would be helpful to restrict the revenue from falling.
According to company sources BSNL is also in talks with some other companies who are quite new in tower business. Private companies like Idea, Reliance and Bharati have already sharing towers with other. The entry of BSNL in this area is expected to strengthen the countries telephone industry.
