Mukesh Ambani’s Jio to rent RCom towers in Rs12,000 cr deal

Brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani, who head two of India's largest business conglomerates, today announced a Rs12,000-crore deal in which Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd will use telecom towers of Reliance Communications Ltd, part of the Anil Ambani group of companies.

Reliance Industries' telecom arm Jio Infocom will lease up to 45,000 mobile masts from RCom. The 15-year deal will net an estimated Rs800 crore a year for RCom.

This is the second deal in two months between the once-antagonistic brothers.

''Under the terms of the agreement, Reliance Jio Infocomm will utilise up to 45,000 ground and rooftop based towers across RCom's nationwide network for accelerated roll out of its state-of-the-art 4G services,'' the two groups said in separate but identical statements.

In the 3010 spectrum auction, Reliance Jio Infocomm was the only company to win pan-India licences for 4G services. However, it is yet to start commercial services.

The agreement comes two months after the Ambani brothers struck their first commercial deal when Mukesh agreed to hire Anil's optic fibre network for launch of his telecom venture. The deal was valued at Rs1,200 crore.

The agreement announced on Friday provides for ''joint working arrangements to configure the scope of additional towers to be built at new locations to ensure deep penetration and seamless delivery of next generation services,'' the statements said.

This pact follows the inter-city optic fibre sharing agreement already signed in April 2013 as part of a comprehensive framework of business co-operation between Reliance Jio Infocomm and Reliance Communications, it added.