Anil Ambani Unfurls Grand Plans At Reliance Communications Agm

[Arun 795]

Press Trust of India

Mumbai July 17, 2007

Reliance Communications has grand plans. The Anil Ambani-led telecommunications major aims to have the single largest wireless network in the world by year-end, covering over 900 million Indians.

The company will invest Rs 16,000 crore (Rs 160 billion) for network expansion in FY08, said RCom chairman Anil Ambani on Tuesday in Mumbai.

RCom is looking at inorganic growth route across the world. The company will cover 23,000 towns, or every single Indian habitation with a population of over 1,000 persons, he said. The company will cover almost 100 per cent of all rail routes, all national highways, and 84 per cent of all state highways, he added.

The company has more than 1 million retail customers in the United States, the largest for any Indian company across any sector, a media release from RCom said.

RCom has launched virtual international calling and voice content services in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand. The company is one of the leading providers of international connectivity and data services to telecom operators, content providers and Internet communities.

Reliance Communications plans to invest Rs 16,000 crore for network expansion in FY08.

• The company will launch DTH services by end of this year.
  
• Reliance Communications to spin-out BPO business.
  
• Reliance Communications to unlock value in Flag Telecom through private placement of equity and international listing of shares before year-end. The company will also unlock value in tower business through placement of minority stake to financial investors.
  

FLAG Telecom has turned around and delivered profits at the net level for the first time since its inception. FLAG connectivity to expand from 40 to 60 countries across the world, representing over 80 per cent of global population and 90 per cent of global GDP.

Yipes acquisition will transform RCom's position in data communications services business in the US and globally.

Yipes operations in 14 major cities of the US, from New York to Los Angeles, from Boston to Houston, from Washington to Seattle. Yipes has nearly 1,000 enterprise customers in the US.

RCom to take the Yipes franchise global, leveraging FLAG network in nearly 40 countries, including India, the Middle East, Asia and Europe. RCom enterprise business serves more than 800 of the top 1,000 companies in India.

RCom wireline network expanded to cover almost 5,00,000 buildings, located in 360 business districts in the top 40 cities of India.

RCom has secured a higher share of the IT and telecom spends of enterprise customers, with market share of more than 50 per cent in new business. RCom has also won repeat orders from premium marquee customers from banking to finance, from aviation to hotels, from IT to BPO.

RCom is already deploying broadband and wireless WiMax network in top 10 cities to serve over 4 million small and medium enterprises, RCom has equipped Bangalore and Pune to provide premier WiMax business solution on an "anyone, anywhere, anytime" basis.

Next generation DTH network is in the final stages of preparation, and services will be launched before the end of the year. RCom plans to launch premium IPTV services in the top cities of India.

Reliance multi-play IPTV platform will leverage optical fiber Ethernet network to deliver the most advanced suite of services.

RCOM undertaking 4 key initiatives for unlocking value this year.

• Unlocking of value in TowerCo through placement of minority stake to financial investors at an advanced stage.
  
• Expect positive surprise in TowerCo valuation compared to analyst estimates.
  
• Yipes acquisition to substantially enhance FLAG Telecom valuation.
  
• Unlocking of value in FLAG Telecom through private placement of equity and/ or international listing of shares before year-end.
  Further unlocking of value through development of Special Economic Zone at Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge Centre focused on IT and IT-enabled services.
  

IT/ITES SEZ project already cleared by the GOI's Board of Approvals.

BPO biz

RCom will spin out global-size and profitable BPO business leveraging in-house skills and operational capabilities. RCom in-house BPO enjoys unique competencies and demonstrated operational excellence in telecom, BFSI, utilities and entertainment verticals.

RCom BPO has over 7,800 employees providing multi-lingual support in voice and back office services from multiple locations.

Unlocking of hidden value through 4 initiatives could represent a significant proportion of RCom's current market capitalisation.

Over the next few years, RCOM will have over 100 million customers, becoming one of the top 5 global telecom players. Convergence between telecom, media, entertainment and the Internet will transform how telecom companies are viewed by all stakeholders.

Digital connectivity brings infinite possibilities of creation, consumption and proliferation of media content in all its diverse forms. RCom will provide the interface and multiple delivery platforms for digital content to be served to hundreds of millions of customers.

[vmsanghrajka 0]

Awesome!!

[Arun 795]

Business Standard

Mumbai July 17, 2007

Chairman Anil Ambani, who was addressed the company’s third annual general meeting in Mumbai today, also announced the setting up of a special economic zone (SEZ) by carving out around 18 acres in the Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge Centre (DAKC) on the outskirts of Mumbai.

The investment - one of the highest ever by a telco in the country (Hutch-Essar has committed a Rs 8,000 crore investment) - will be utilised for network expansion, erection of 23,000 mobile towers, launch of DTH and Wimax services and increasing the company’s coverage to 900 million-plus Indians. RCom aims to cover 23,000 towns or every single habitation with a population of over 1,000 persons.

“Maximisation of shareholder value is the key mantra for us. To this end, apart from other measures, we are undertaking four key initiatives this year,” Ambani told the shareholders.

The company will hive off its BPO operations into a separate entity, which employs 7,800 personnel across various locations. The BPO unit provides multi-lingual support to telecom, banking financial services and insurance (BFSI), utilities and entertainment verticals.

RCom will also develop a part of its 132-acre campus at DAKC, the company’s headquarters in Navi Mumbai, into an SEZ. The SEZ will focus on IT and IT-enables services.

The company is also looking at a private placement of Reliance Telecom Infrastructure’s equity (the tower infrastructure business) and Flag Telecom to international institutional investors. The tower business will also be listed in India, while Flag Telecom would be listed on foreign bourses by year-end, he said.

Having received licenses for direct-to-home operations in May, Reliance will commence the services by December. That apart, the company will also roll out its Internet protocol-based TV services within the same time frame.

[neerajayshree 36]

Business Standard

Having received licenses for direct-to-home operations in May, Reliance will commence the services by December. That apart, the company will also roll out its Internet protocol-based TV services within the same time frame.

Now That is what i call good news

[Honest 836]

^^^

I feel good to hear this my dear friends.

[petar 15]

SHAREHOLDERS should feel nice...!

Rest no bid deal... nothing for u.

[ani_meher 42]

As a shareholder, i feel nice

[copperco2 24]

As a shareholder, i feel nice

Too bad, i sold out my lot early

[srk006 21]

As a shareholder, i feel nice

Too bad, i sold out my lot early

Same here. Now regreting over my decision..

[@ksh@T 20]

guys u need to rejoice when this comes to action......

[petar 15]

Reliance Unlocks Value Of Tower Business

Reuters India, India / 19-08-2007

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Reliance Communications Ltd. has sold 5 percent of its 270 billion rupee ($6.75 billion) telecom tower business, and could sell more through an IPO or further placements, Chairman Anil Ambani said on Thursday.

Shares in India's second-largest mobile services firm jumped to a record high after Ambani said the placement of the 5 percent stake in Reliance Telecom Infrastructure Ltd. (RTIL) had raised 14 billion rupees, a big premium to analysts' expectations.

"Our strategy to create a separate company for the infrastructure business has resulted in tremendous unlocking of value for shareholders," Ambani told reporters.

The RTIL stake was sold to a clutch of leading institutional investors in the United States, Europe and Asia, he said, adding the company was evaluating a possible initial public offering or further strategic equity placements.

"The valuation is a huge positive surprise," said Shubham Majumder, telecom analyst at Macquarie Research, which had valued RTIL at $4.5 billion.

Reliance Communications, which lags leader Bharti Airtel Ltd., planned 80 billion rupees of capital expenditure in the fiscal year ending March 2008 to add another 23,000 telecom towers to its existing network of around 14,000 towers, Ambani said.

"We see a huge upside to the Reliance Communications stock," said Majumder, who has an "outperform" rating on the stock which tops the list of 57 Asia-Pacific telecom stocks that Macquarie tracks.

Shares in Reliance Communications jumped as much as 3.5 percent to a record high of 586.90 rupees.

India is the world's fastest-growing mobile services market, with more than 6 million subscribers signing up each month, lured by tariffs as low as one U.S. cent a minute and the extension of networks to rural areas as operators move away from cities.

Reliance Communications said on Monday it had agreed to buy U.S.-based managed ethernet services provider Yipes for $300 million, and looking for more international buys.

It said on Monday it was also considering a private placement and/or an overseas share issue for it unit Flag, which operates its under-sea cable network.

[Arun 795]

Business Standard

Having received licenses for direct-to-home operations in May, Reliance will commence the services by December. That apart, the company will also roll out its Internet protocol-based TV services within the same time frame.

Now That is what i call good news

Financial Express has reported the following today:

The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group’s (ADAG) entertainment vertical, is expected to launch Reliance Blue Magic by March 2008 after it gets its license by the end of this year. Blue Magic is expected to receive Ku-band transponders on Insat 4CR which will only be up by September-October. Reliance has asked for eight Ku-band transponders and ISRO is reserving the remaining four for other users like National Informatics Centre’s VSAT operations. RADAG is striving to emerge as a panmedia player with operations across the film value chain, radio, animation, television production and distribution under Adlabs and Internet broadband, gaming and DTH under other group companies.

Bit confusing with the conflicting reports, I think Reliance got the letter of intent after government accepted their application. The actual license is yet to be given as per the Financial Express report as above I guess.

[Himanshu Singh 19]

Guys I pity other Telcom operators.They would be helpless if and when Reliance does all what it plans.

[srk006 21]

Reliance Comm Q1 net jumps, beats forecast

31 Jul, 2007, 1530 hrs IST, REUTERS

MUMBAI: Reliance Communications, India's second-largest mobile firm, said on Tuesday its June quarter net profit more than doubled, beating forecasts, as it added more users in the world's fastest-growing mobile market.

Reliance Communications, which had more than 32 million mobile users at end-June, said net profit for the June quarter rose to Rs 12.21 billion, from 5.13 billion reported a year earlier.

Revenue rose 32 per cent to Rs 43.04 billion from 32.50 billion reported a year earlier. The firm gets more than 65 per cent of its revenue from wireless subscribers.

A Reuters poll of ten brokerages had forecast a rise in net profit to Rs 11.11 billion on revenue of 42.56 billion.

Larger rival Bharti Airtel last week reported that its quarterly net profit had doubled to Rs 15.12 billion.

Shares in Reliance Communications, India's fifth-most valuable firm, gained 23.1 per cent during April and June, outperformimg a 12.1 per cent rise in the benchmark index.

Source

[HetalDP 947]

Whats use to the Customer

We only get Classic, Classic, Classic & Classic

Nothing else.

No use of World Class NGN Next Generation Network 60,000 Km Fiber and all. If we don;t have Device which can take the Benefit of that.

[@mitJ@in 256]

Whats use to the Customer

We only get Classic, Classic, Classic & Classic

Nothing else.

No use of World Class NGN Next Generation Network 60,000 Km Fiber and all. If we don;t have Device which can take the Benefit of that.

Sir, There are a very few people who wish or will to have powerfull devices of which you are talking about..

I have been selling Reliance Handsets since 2003.

I have seen people are happy in buying cheap end handsets..

People dun like to waste money by buying huge devices especially Reliane CDMA Devices..

and 60000 Km Fiber is for Connectvity, it has nothing to do with Heavy Devices

[Ramchi 0]

Such news are good for Reliance shareholders who may gain in the market due to speculation about many "plans" of Reliance which keeps unfurling every other day. It keeps their presence relevance in the market in which Reliance supposed to dominate technology front due to its CDMA advantages and its supposedly well laid fiber optic cables across the country. But in the end what we get is only hypes in the market with NIL in substance.

Even if Reliance is ready to move further, we have DOT, TRAI and our Government which will ensure that we will stay where we are today. 3G, 4G, EV-DO etc...have become distance dream for Indian mobile users.