Reliance Jio proposes merger of Infotel for offering global services

Reliance Jio Infocomm, the mobile services arm of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), has proposed a merger of its wholly-owned subsidiary Infotel Telecom with itself to enable it to offer national and international long-distance services under a single licence.

In a letter to the telecom department, Reliance Jio and Infotel Telecom said the latter had moved the Mumbai High Court in February seeking approval to merge with the holding company.

Reliance Jio, which has licence to offer high-speed data and voice services across India through airwaves in the 2300 MHz band, is in the process of laying underground optical fibre cables (OFC) to roll out 2G voice and 4G LTE data services pan-India.

The company also recently won spectrum in the 1800 MHz band in 14 circles, through which it can offer voice as well.

Infotel Telecom owns licences to offer national long distance (NLD) and international long distance (ILD) services.

A merger of the two will allow Reliance Jio to comply with the unified licence requirement and thereby offer all voice and data services under a single brand.

Reliance Jio bought 95 per cent stake in Infotel Telecom for Rs4,800 crore immediately after the BWA auction in 2010 (See: RIL acquires 95-% stake in Infotel Broadband). 

"In view of RJIL holding unified licence having authorisation of all services, including NLD and ILD services, we wish to carry out NLD and ILD business under a single licence. It is, therefore, proposed to consolidate ITL and RJIL into one single company through amalgamation," the two companies said in the letter.

Jio is the only company to own 20 MHz of broadband spectrum in the 2300 MHz band, using which it can offer 4G services across all circles.