
The agreement will help Aircel widen its reach as BSNL has about 1.14 lakh mobile towers across country, said Aircel in a statement.
BSNL has second highest number of mobile towers in the country and also premium 900 Mhz spectrum that it is using for 2G services. With continued investment BSNL expects to have around 1,35,000 mobile towers, maximum owned by a company.
The state-run telecom firm is also in talks with other private telcos for ICR agreements to share its passive infrastructure. For ICR, BSNL has been talking to Telenor, Airtel, Vodafone, Aircel and Reliance Jio.
Along with spectrum sharing, revenue expectations will go much higher, its chairman and managing director Anupam Shrivastava told. BSNL is expected to earn Rs 300-400 crore a year through ICR arrangements starting this financial year.
BSNL has idle spectrum in many locations. "It (spectrum sharing and trading) will be a huge revenue potential for us," Shrivastava added.
BSNL, which recorded Rs 7,600 crore of loss for the previous financial year, expects to cuts its losses by Rs 1,000-1,500 crore for 2015-16.