RCOM, Etisalat sign infra sharing pact

Etisalat DB and Reliance Communications (RCOM) announced a long term passive infrastructure sharing agreement which will accelerate Etisalat Telecom's forthcoming roll-out of telecom services in India. Under the terms of the agreements, Etisalat and its subsidiary would outsource their Telecom infrastructure requirements for the 15 telecom circles, encompassing end-to-end tower and transmission infrastructure to Reliance Infratel Ltd. and RCOM, respectively. RCOM would offer about ,000 towers to Etisalat for hosting latter's passive and other telecom infrastructure services. RCOM would deliver the first batch of towers in the next 60-90 days while the complete ramp up would occur over the next 18 months. In return, Reliance Infratel would receive steady state annual revenues to the tune of Rs10-12bn (ex-pass through charges) for a period of 10 years. Incremental revenue flow from the deal would occur only from Q4 FY11.