Mobile companies play brothers!

Big players like Bharti have already started working on the infrastructure

sharing side

As different service providers are busy investing heavy amo-unts in

establishing networks after networks-wireless infra-structure sharing at the

service provider level can provide a good option to reduce capex for an

operator.

"Sharing of infrastructure allows mobile service provi-ders to work

together to achi-eve operational synergies not just on the financial side but

also on the capex side. As much as 40 percent of capex can be saved by a mobile

operator," explained Prakash Ranjalkar, senior VP and Country Manager, GTL

Ltd network engineering .

Explaining the reason why it has not taken off so far, Ranjal-kar said that

till now infrastru-cture competency was impor-tant for an operator. Coverage was

king and it was used to great competitive advantage. "But now the scenario

is chan-ging and operators should seriously look forward to leveraging on

existing infra-structure," he added.

With more and more subs-cribers being added in the Indian telecom fabric

every month, infrastructure sharing would hold ground in circles where there are

different ope-rators vying for the same set of subscribers.

Big players like Bharti have already started working on the infrastructure

sharing side. "We were always open to this idea of infrastructure sharing.

In fact we are doing this with different players in different circles of the

country. This is especially helpful if you want to increase your reach in the

country. So if an operator is working on infrastructure sharing basis than its

chances of penetrating deep into the country are fairly balanced with regards to

business obje-ctives," informed Atul Bindal, Chief Marketing Officer and

Mobility Director, Bharti Tele-Ventures group.

Ranjalkar is quick to add that "if an operator goes for a model

involving infrastructure sharing than it need not worry about the financial

burden of network expansion and con-centrate of its quality of service being

offered."

On the policy side of things, telecom watchdog-Telecom Regulatory Authority

of India (TRAI) believes that infrastru-cture sharing will bring in more

revenues to the operator as well as reducing the 'cost to connect' for an

individual customer.

"Building separate base stations is a time consuming process, so if an

operator shares that infrastructure than it is going to lower its invest-ment to

quite an extent.

Though we have not come up with a definite consultation paper in this regard,

we are telling different operators to consider this initiative, as this is good

for the industry as a whole" explained advisor at TRAI Rajendra Singh.

Zia Askari (CyberMedia News)