Reliance Jio may buy majority assets of Anil Ambani's debt-laden RCom

By Techenonik   |   Published: 23rd December 2017 01:20 AM  |  

Last Updated: 23rd December 2017 08:44 AM  |   A+A A-   |  

Reliance Jio .(Photo | Reuters)

NEW DELHI: Even as many telcos have shown interest in buying the assets of Anil Ambani’s debt-laden Reliance Communications (RCom), Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio seems to emerge as the strongest contender. According to reports, Jio may bid for RCom India’s assets for Rs 18,000 crore, while Bharti Airtel has placed an offer of Rs 7,600 crore. Jio’s bids, reportedly, would include Rs10,000 crore for towers, optic fibre, network operating centre and data centres business. And, Rs 8,000 crore is a spectrum.

Bharti Airtel has bid for the undersea cables and enterprise business of RCom for Rs7,600 crore. “There are talks going on for the sale of RCom assets to other companies for a while. It will be clear very soon which companies will get RCom assets,” said a source familiar with the deal.

Express contacted Reliance Jio for comments, but no immediate response came in. According to some reports, Reliance Jio is keen to acquire RCom’s spectrum assets in the 850 Mhz and 2100 Mhz band.
RCom has 850 Mhz spectrum in all 22 circles and 2100 Mhz spectrum in 13 circles. Experts say it will be a wise decision for Jio to buy RCom assets since it uses the latter’s spectrum, fibre and tower network.
Many domestic, as well as international companies, have shown interest in buying out the assets of RCom after it decided to shut down operations. 

RCom finances 
The company posted a consolidated net loss of H2,709 crore for the July-September period compared to a profit of H62 crore in the year-ago quarter. At present, RCom has a total debt of H45,000 crore. The company confirmed selling off its Reliance BIG TV to Veecon Media and Television and Pantel Technologies