Once warring, Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil have decided to call truce to launch the fourth generation mobile phone services by the end of the year, signalling a consolidation in the Indian telecom market. Calling it a “virtual consolidation”, Reliance Group chairman Anil Ambani said at the Reliance Communications annual general meeting that he was typing up “trading and sharing” of spectrum with Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance JIO for offering 4G services. RCom is India's fourth biggest mobile phone carrier by subscribers.
With this partnership, the brothers have taken a profound step in working together after their father Dhirubhai's death in 2002 led to a power struggle between both of them which resulted in the splitting of the empire. Anil Ambani told the company's shareholders that the talks were at advanced stages for acquiring the India operations of Sistema Shyam TeleServices, besides hiving off the passive infrastructure of telecom towers into a separate company.
Anil Ambani told his company’s shareholders that the latest partnership would allow Reliance Communications to access 4G mobile networks of Jio, and in turn, can use the former’s 2G and 3G networks when needed. Earlier, in 2013, Reliance Jio had entered into an agreement with RCOM for sharing its extensive inter-city and intra-city infrastructure of nearly 520,000 km of optic fiber pairs, besides 45,000 towers.
