Active infrastructure sharing includes spectrum and active telecom infrastructure such as antennae, feeder cables, and transmission systems.
Active Infrastructure sharing could help operators with relatively empty networks to share their Base Terminal Stations (BTS) electronics. This is typically possible when one shares spectrum, one can also share the same electronics on the network. This could reduce the need of towers conceptually if one were to carrier aggregate each other's spectrum. However, our discussions with industry participants reveal this would be advantageous to tower companies as tenancy would go up due to faster roll outs as well as roll outs in areas which were not feasible since two operators can now share costs.
Most operators are looking at ICR (Inter Circle roaming); when they are starting operations in a circle in a specific technology band, such as 4G currently, each would build a network in half an area and also cover rural regions where in they do not have coverage using active infrastructure.
