Benefits to be gained from infrastructure sharing

Due to the recent economic downturn, private developers are now keenly aware of the need to cooperate if they are to effectively utilize existing and new infrastructure resources when investing in large, capital-intensive utilities projects. The adoption of competitive bidding as the method for awarding utilities contracts, coupled with demanding regulatory requirements, has encouraged private developers to explore ways to minimize costs and improve the economic viability of such projects.

Industry initiatives

The mobile telephony sector may offer the best case study of the advantages of sharing infrastructure.

Mobile telecom infrastructure typically consists of active electronic components such as base transceiver stations, microwave radio equipment and passive non-electronic components such as towers, air-conditioning, generators and shelters. When telecom networks were first rolled out, each mobile operator set up its own towers to fulfil the roll-out requirements detailed in their licences.

Akshay Jaitly is a partner at Trilegal in Delhi, where Shailendra Kumar Singh is a senior associate and Anuja Tiwari is an associate. Trilegal is a full-service law firm with offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The firm has over 120 lawyers, some of whom have experience with law firms in the US, the UK and Japan.