The deal indicates that the billionaire brothers, who were feuding publicly till a few years back, are ready to bury their hatchets for commercial interests
Once-feuding billionaire Ambani brothers signed a long-expected pact for their rival telecoms businesses to share mobile masts in a contract valued at over Rs 12,000 crore over several years, in the biggest deal between them since a reconciliation. Elder brother Mukesh’s Reliance Industries will lease up to 45,000 mobile masts from mobile carrier RelianceCommunications of his younger brother Anil in the deal over the lifetime of the contract, the companies said yesterday in separate statements.
Reliance Jio Infocomm, a unit of Reliance Industries, plans to roll out a nationwide 4G network by next year. The company won airwaves in 2010, has already invested Rs 18,000 crore into this since then. Reliance Jio said the tower deal will help "accelerated roll-out" of its planned 4G services. A Reliance Industries spokesman said the long-term contract has no fixed length. The deal is a boost for Reliance Communications, which is the third largest telco by customers. The deal will help RCom to pare it huge debt pile of close to Rs 35,000 crore.
The tower deal comes after an agreement in April to lease RCom’s optic fiber network to Reliance Jio, in what was the first business tie-up between the warring brothers since ending a long-running feud. The deal also comes a day after Mukesh told shareholders at the annual general meeting that he has a bullish view of the potential for digital services and the Reliance Jio unit would more than triple its headcount to 10,000 over the next year, but did not say when services will be launched.
