The new entrant Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea already have announced plans to hive off their fibre assets into separate entities.
Cash-strapped telecom player BSNL, which faced issues with salary payments last month, plans to hive off its fibre assets into a separate company, which is expected to have a valuation of Rs 10,000-15,000 crore.
According to estimates, BSNL has about eight lakh route km of fibre infrastructure across India compared with that of Reliance Jio having 4.78 lakh route km (including 178,000 route km that it acquired from Reliance Communications), Airtel having 2.46 lakh route km and Vodafone Idea having 1.56 lakh km.
With content becoming the future for the telecom industry, a huge amount of fibre infrastructure will be required to match the rising data consumption.
BSNL has fibre network spread across the country. The plan is to share fibre assets or lease out to other telecom players as well as focus on its own fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service to create an additional stream of revenues, a senior official from BSNL told DNA Money.
The new entrant Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea already have announced plans to hive off their fibre assets into separate entities. Last year, Jio had announced the launch of its broadband service Jio Giga Fiber across 1,100 cities.
