Cellular companies in different circles are negotiating with each other to share infrastructure costs.
After Birla-AT&T Commu-nications Ltd and BPL-US West Communications initiated discussions to share facilities like transmission links and towers, at least six other operators have started similar discussions.
Escotel Mobile Communi-cations Ltd is talking with BPL-US West to share facilities in Kerala and the Essar-controlled Aircell Digilink in Haryana.
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Escotel has already set up microwave transmission links commonly called `backbones in the two states.
The other operators that have begun discussions include Reliance Mobile, Bharti Telenet and Koshika Telecom. The Reli-ance cellular company is negotiating with Bharti Telenet on cost sharing in Himachal Pradesh.
Sources said that apart from sharing costs like a common backbone, the two companies are also considering using the same mobile switching centre and base transceiver stations. The Reliance company has also held talks with Koshika Telecom on the sharing of common costs.
The companies hold licen-ces in two common cirlces - Bihar and Orissa. Talks were on for some time but seem to have broken down, a telecom source said.
The cellular companies facility-sharing attempts are driven by a prospective 20-30 per cent cost advantage. Typically, microwave backbones cost between 25 per cent and 40 per cent of the network cost.
For example, in the $100 million (Rs 365 crore) equipment supply contract between Escotel and Lucent Techno-logies, about 30 per cent of the cost is estimated to be for the microwave backbone alone.
If two companies in a circle decide to share the backbone costs (on a leased or equal investment basis), they can save 15 per cent.
The amount saved increases if companies get down to sharing towers for antenna or base stations, the source said.
Another factor prodding companies to the negotiating table is the high rental for a DoT-leased link. A 2 Mbps line (consisting of 30 voice channels) of the department costs Rs 70 lakh a year.
With a little additional investment, the companies can put up their own link, the source added. However, a common issue that remains to be resolved is the one of trust.
The companies are not very comfortable sharing facilities with their competitors. This problem gets accentuated between large companies and the smaller ones, the source said.
What happens if the company which owns the link decides to disallow the competitor access? he asked.