Telecom giants Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel are in talks to turn their proposed optic fibre network joint entity into an infrastructure investment trust (InvIT), reported The Economic Times.

The move, the report said, is aimed at making the venture a real competitor to rival Reliance Jio Infocomm.

“The two companies are likely to announce their optic fibre combined entity by the end of this month which will be an InvIT since it has many benefits such as pushing some debt off the books of the two telcos,” a person close to the development told The Economic Times.

The merger plan, once materialises, will convert Vodafone Idea’s 156,000 route km of optic fibre and Airtel’s 246,000 km into a network that is over 4,00,000 Km long in comparison to Jio’s 3,00,000 km network, the report said.

The development comes at a time when Jio has already transferred its tower and fibre assets to two special purpose vehicles (SPVs) owned by Sebi-registered InvITs named Jio Digital Fibre (JDFPL) and Reliance Jio Infratel.

(Disclosure: RIL, the promoter of Reliance Jio, also controls Network18, the parent company of CNBCTV18.com.)