Reliance Communications
Reliance Infocomm is an Indian telecommunications company, and is the brainchild of Mukesh Ambani, CMD, Reliance Industries. It is the flagship company of the Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, comprising the power Reliance Energy, financial services Reliance Capital, telecom and infocomm initiatives of the Reliance Group. Reliance Infocomm is currently managed by Anil Dhirubhai Ambani.
Reliance Infocomm is the outcome of the late visionary Dhirubhai Ambani's (1932-2002) dream to herald a digital revolution in India by bringing affordable means of information and communication to the doorsteps of India's vast population.
Dhirubhai Ambani charted out the mission for Reliance Infocomm in late 1999. He saw in the potential of information and communication technology a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for India to leapfrog over its historical legacy of backwardness and underdevelopment.
Working at breakneck speed, from late 1999 to 2002 Reliance Infocomm built the backbone for India — 60,000 kilometres of fibre optic backbone, crisscrossing the entire country. This network was commissioned on December 28, 2002, the 70th birth-anniversary of Dhirubhai. This day also marked his first birth anniversary after his demise July 6, 2002.
RIC also offered for the first time in India high-speed mobile data services though its R-World mobile portal. This portal leverages the high-speed data capability of the next generation CDMA 1X network. It provides 70 applications such as news, astrology, T.V. guides, movie clips etc. and 35 games and logs more than 1 billion hits a month.
As of May 2006 Reliance Infocomm had user base of 19.3 million. RIC is aggressively expanding the reach of its network in order to reach more subscribers by extending its services to cover an additional 3,800 towns. It is estimated that the mobile market in India will grow to 140 million subscribers by FY 2008.
There are reports that Reliance plans to enter the GSM market, perhaps by March 2007. Whether they would eventually shut down their CDMA network and migrate all their users to GSM is unclear at the moment.[1]
In January 2004, Reliance Infocomm (RIC) acquired 100 per cent of the undersea cable company, FLAG Telecom for US$ 211 million through Reliance Gateway Net Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of RIC. This acquisition provides RIC with an international gateway to global markets.
Today, Reliance Infocomm, along with Reliance Telecom and Flag Telecom, is part of Reliance Communications Ventures (RCoVL), which listed on Indian Stock exchanges on March 6, 2006. The current market capitalisation is about Rs 36,000 crores (US$ 8 billion).