Bharti Airtel and Reliance Industries' will-it-ever-launch data services venture Jio have inked a Master Services Agreement, allowing Jio to utilize Infratel's tower infrastructure across the country, with the pricing at 'arm’s length' based on prevailing market rates. This is Jio's second partnership with a Bharti group enterprise. In December last year, it had inked a similar agreement with Bharti Airtel, looking to avoid duplication of infrastructure. Unlike Bharti Infratel, Airtel is a direct competitor for Jio, and the two companies will share optic fibre, submarine cable networks, towers and internet broadband services. That arrangement could be extended to roaming on 2G, 3G and 4G services. This particular deal comes almost a year after Jio and Airtel partnered for international data connectivity. Jio also has an agreement with Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications for sharing its nationwide inter-city fibre optic network infrastructure, and tower infrastructure within India. It has also joined a consortium to set up a submarine cable system via the Bay of Bengal. In the recently concluded spectrum auctions, Reliance Jio won 78.8 MHz spectrum in 1800 MHz in 14 circles for Rs 11054.41 crore. In terms of city specific spectrum, the maximum spectrum it won was 6.6 MHz for Rs 1795.20 crore in Mumbai, followed by Madhya Pradesh (6.4 MHz for Rs 22 crore) and North East (6.4 MHz for Rs 44.8 crore). The most expensive spectrum it won was in Delhi, at Rs 1965.6 crore for 5.4 MHz. Download our table for the spectrum auction results here. Recent Reliance Jio News: Feb 14, 2014: Jio will…
