Telecommunication companies can now share their active infrastructure

The department of telecommunications (DoT) has approved industry regulator Trai’s recommendations to allow service providers share active infrastructure. The move will help telcos to lower tariffs and reduce their expenditure by well over 50%.
At present, Indian telecos are permitted to share only passive infrastructure like towers, repeaters, shelters and generators. Sharing of active infrastructure will allow operators to share key electronic components such as antennas, feeder cables, nodes, radio access network, transmission systems and backhaul.
The change in the policy implies that new entrants who are allotted spectrum can completely ride on the infrastructure of existing players and launch services within a short span. The entry of these new players is also likely to trigger a tariff war, which can result in a further reduction of call rates. Subscribers in India already enjoy the lowest cellular tariffs across the world.
Active infrastructure sharing will play a major role in expediting the rollout of mobile network across the country, especially in rural India. Rural rollouts carry a higher operation expenditure. The telecom department has now sought an endorsement from the Telecom Commission, is the apex decision making body, for the proposal. Active infrastructure sharing will become a policy only after clearance from the telecom panel, which is expected soon.
Telcos have been seeking the government’s permission for sharing active infrastructure. During a recent meeting on the scrapping of the access deficit charge, several telcos had pointed out that they would pass on the cost benefits due to active infrastructure sharing to their customers.
Apart from savings on operational costs and capital investment, the move will enable operators provide mobile services to their subscribers wherever their own network signal is not available. It will also help them increase their coverage area and improve quality of service with almost no additional expenditure.
“Based on mutual agreement, service providers may have active infrastructure sharing limited to antenna, feeder cable, Node B, radio access networks and transmission system, but sharing of allocated spectrum is not possible. DoT will be amending the licence conditions of UASL/CMTS (unified access service licence and cellular mobile telephone service.
Details of the active infrastructure sharing will be put on the web by service providers,” DoT wrote to the Telecom Commission on February 14. The note said DoT has accepted Trai’s recommendations on active infrastructure “with a different approach”.
DoT has also accepted Trai’s proposal that there will be no mandated sharing of infrastructure. But the entire process will be transparent and non-discriminatory, it said. The mode of commercial agreement has been left to the telecom service providers.
Trai had recommended for an amendment in the licence conditions to allow service providers to share their backhaul from base trans-receiver station (BTS) to base station controller (BSC). It has noted that such a sharing is permitted on optical fibre as well as radio medium at certain ‘nodes’.
DoT, in its note to the Telecom Commission, has added that no such amendment was required as the licence conditions already allowed operators to share backhaul from BTS and BSC. “For this, there is no need to amend licensing conditions of UASL clause number 33 (ii) and CMTS clause number 34 (ii). However, no sharing of spectrum at access network side is permitted,” the DoT communique said.