Bharti open to sharing active infra: Mittal

Sunil Mittal, chairman, Bharti Airtel, today said the company is open to sharing active infrastructure such as antennas, transmission systems and feeder cables with other mobile operators.

"We are open to sharing active infrastructure with other mobile operators - even with new companies," Mittal said today.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had, last year, recommended sharing of active infrastructure among all operators. This recommendation, if accepted by the department of telecommunications (DoT), would reduce expenditure for all companies and may also lead to further lowering of tariffs.

It would also benefit new entrants in the mobile space by enabling them to share infrastructure of the existing operators.

DoT recently issued letters of intent to nine firms including Unitech, Datacom, Shyam Telelink.

Mobile service providers already share passive infrastructure such as towers, repeaters and shelters.

Bharti Airtel is aiming at having 100-125 million subscribers by 2010, Mittal said. The company currently has 60 million users, and is among the top 10 mobile companies in the world.