Ambani brothers join hands for 4G services

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani said his company will partner with elder brother, Mukesh Ambani to come together to launch fourth-generation (4G) mobile phone services by the year-end.

RCom is India's fourth-biggest mobile phone carrier by subscribers. Ambani, however, did not disclose any equity transaction at this juncture.

With this partnership,  Ambani brothers have taken another step in working together after their father Dhirubhai Ambani’s death in 2002 led to a power struggle between his two sons that split the Reliance empire.

Addressing the company's shareholders on Wednesday, Anil Ambani said talks were at advanced stages for acquiring the India operations of Sistema Shyam TeleServices, besides hiving off the passive infrastructure of telecom towers into a separate company.

On Wednesday, Anil Ambani told his company’s shareholders that the latest partnership would allow Reliance Communications to access 4G mobile networks of Jio, which, in turn, can use the former’s 2G and 3G networks when needed.

Earlier, in 2013, Reliance Jio had entered into an agreement with RCOM for sharing its extensive inter-city and intra-city infrastructure of nearly 520,000 km of optic fiber pairs, besides 45,000 towers.