With the government recently releasing guidelines on sharing of active infrastructure, tele.net invited industry experts to share their views on the potential of active infrastructure sharing. Excerpts from the panel discussion...

Sudhir Kumar
Deputy Director-General, Infrastructure, BSNL
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is targeting 100 million mobile connections in the next three years and hence has its own requirements. While existing towers will be difficult to share, in the future, we are considering sharing new towers. Since active infrastructure sharing has been recently allowed, the company is working out whether it will be able to spare the infrastructure after considering its requirements. Being in the government, we have social obligations that cannot be ignored.

In the case of infrastructure sharing, there are many rates, including diesel and electricity rates. The infrastructure provider should come out with an average rate for the country, making it easier for both the operator and the service provider.

Anuj Maheshwari
Director, Temasek Holdings
The capex needs of service providers are humongous: 60 per cent of the capex cost is on account of passive infrastructure and the balance 40 per cent is active. And of that 40 per cent, perhaps only 20-25 per cent is shareable. Passive infrastructure costs have been going up for all operators for the past 12 to 18 months. In active infrastructure on the other hand, as the scale goes up, the costs per unit keep reducing. In addition, active infrastructure sharing is complex, requiring significant commercial and technological manoeuvring. The key challenges are agreeing on the cost-sharing basis for active infrastructure sharing and overcoming technological implementation issues.

Active infrastructure sharing needs to be done in a way that prevents cartelisation and anti-competitive behaviour. Priority should be given to passive infrastructure sharing where costs are higher and are increasing vis-à-vis active infrastructure sharing where operators have the advantage of scale. Globally, most deals in active infrastructure sharing have taken place in 3G.

Rajeev Mittal
CTO, Punjab, Spice Communications
There are three alternatives for active infrastructure sharing. In the first option, antennas, cables, microwaves and bandwidth can be shared. Currently, in-building solutions are being offered in the metros where the infrastructure is being shared. Similarly, two or three operators can share cables and antennas. The second alternative is intra-circle roaming. At present, intra-circle roaming is not allowed because it is a challenge to build so many towers to provide coverage to customers. In this case, two or three operators could form a consortium. If all the operators roam into each other's network and share the capacity, it will result in cost savings.

The third alternative is infrastructure provider (IP) licensing, which allows passive infrastructure sharing but not active infrastructure sharing.

Vijay Raju
Technology Strategist, Tata Teleservices
With the regulations allowing operators to share the active elements of telecom infrastructure, including antennas, sphere cables, node-b and transmission systems, telecom operators will be able to provide services to customers quicker, and utilise their resources better. With the new antennas, which handle multi-bands, many operators can use the same antenna if the network is shared.

Even if one operator puts up a transmission line and leases capacity to other operators, it saves a lot of cost as transmission is a major cost for an operator. Base transceiver station sharing can happen primarily with Wi-Max and 3G services.

However, there are also some challenges. First, operators should be willing to come forward to share the network.Second, individual control over the resources may not be possible if they are shared. Third, radio planning issues are a key concern. Finally, operators must have rollout flexibility. For instance, if two operators share their network, they need to work out how fast they want to roll out the network and network ownership issues.

Mahesh Uppal
Director, ComFirst India
Whatever is shared in a capital-intensive business is an opportunity, particularly for new operators, who can begin to compete sooner than their peers did a few years ago.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has not mandated infrastructure sharing. This is interesting since, for the past few years, while it has been possible to share passive infrastructure, it has only been shared in some places. For instance, while BSNL allows Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited to roam, it does not grant the same facility to private operators. Infrastructure sharing depends on the operator's need to roll out networks and guard its competitive advantage. So infrastructure sharing typically works best where the sharing is between equals.

Operational issues may be complicated.For instance, even before the government officially allowed it, private mobile operators allowed calls to be exchanged between each other at no cost because there was parity between their traffic.

We need to lay bigger pipes, especially in the rural areas where the requirement for broadband will be higher. TRAI and the government must recognise that while we need to roll out networks and bring down costs, we cannot do this at the expense of not having large enough pipes and not having broadband in the rural areas.