Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJIL), the telecommunication arm of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), may sign a deal with Reliance Communication (RCom) to share their intra-city fibre-optic network. This pact will cost about Rs.3,000 -3,500 crore to RJIL and smoothen the process of its launch of 4G services across the country. The funds would be transferred in about a month or two after the deal is signed.
According to the deal, Reliance Jio would be able to offer its telecom services within a city using the fibre optic network. This will be the third deal between the two companies. Previously, RJIL had signed a Rs 12,000 crore deal with RCom to share its telecom towers, followed by an agreement for Rs 1,200 crore to share the fibre-optic network between cities. Many analysts view this third deal as a logical extension to the inter-city network sharing deal signed in April this year. These deals have proved beneficial to RCom as it helps them to clear their enormous debt of Rs 38,400 crore.
Apart from these deals, the upcoming telecom company has already received an investment of Rs 18,000 crore from Reliance. At the last Annual General Meeting, Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of RIL, had said, “Together with our partners, we have charted an ambitious plan for the next 12 months, and we at Reliance Jio foresee making rapid progress over the period towards launching our services across India.” He added that in near future everything done digitally is transformed to a value-creating and life-enriching experience across all strata of the society. These 4G services will drastically change the lives of 1.2 billion citizens of the country.
The company has already finalized its key vendors, device partners, manufacturer and technology partners and infrastructure partners for the initial launch of its services pan-India. Jio Infcom is planning to recruit 7,000 more people and reaching a headcount of 10,000 by next year. It will build on affordability and providing an unparallel range of services that do not exist today. He said,” In the coming years Reliance Jio’s next generation digital infra and services platform will catalyze a transformation and will embrace almost every facet of India’s economic growth and social progress.”
Reliance Jio Infocomm had won licenses in 2010 and bandwidth to offer broadband wireless services across the country. Recently, Department of Telecommunication approved the company to test their messaging services also.