Anil Ambani ready to share telecom network with Mukesh: report

Having entered the telecom sector by acquiring Infotel Broadband earlier this week, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has begun discussions with brother Anil Ambani's mobile service arm, Reliance Communications (R-Com), for a possible sharing of infrastructure, according to a Business Standard report.

The agreement would try to cover the sharing of towers and optic fibre network for 10-15 years, the paper quoted unnamed people close to the development as saying. Reliance Infratel, a subsidiary of R-Com, has about 50,000 towers across the country.

The tie-up with R-Com, India's second largest telecom company, would help RIL reduce the roll-out time for its network as well as save costs. The agreement, the report says, is likely to be finalised in the next one to two months.

Anil Ambani, through R-Com, said he welcomed the entry of his elder brother, with whom he has had a bitter legal quarrel over the past five years, into the same sector as his competitor. The brothers had recently agreed to scrap their 'no-compete' agreement, under which RIL could not enter the telecom sector.

''We welcome the entry of Reliance Industries into the high-potential wireless broadband space. As telecom infrastructure and content service providers, we look forward to offer our services to RIL and other BWA (broadband wireless access) players, even while we compete for customers in the market place through our choice of different technologies,'' spokesperson for Anil's Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group said.

Apart from today's talks of a new collaboration between the formerly warring siblings, the two brothers' companies also expressed agreement on technology. They both supported LTE, or long-term evolution technology. LTE is a fourth-generation radio technology, designed to increase speed and the capacity of mobile telephone networks. It is considered the best currently available.