Mumbai, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire a substantial stake in Infotel Broadband Services (P) Ltd, which has emerged as a successful bidder in all the 22 circles of the auction for Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) Spectrum conducted by the DoT. RIL will invest about Rs 4,800 crore by way of subscription to fresh equity capital at par to be issued by Infotel Broadband. Post this investment, RIL will own 95% of the equity and Infotel Broadband will be a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited.

RIL sees the broadband opportunity as a new frontier of knowledge economy in which it can take a leadership position and provide India with an opportunity to be in the forefront among the countries providing world-class 4G network and services. A single 20 MHz TDD spectrum when used with LTE (Long Term Evolution) has the potential of providing greater capacity when compared to existing communication infrastructure in the country.

India has witnessed substantial growth in the mobile subscriber base over the last decade. This provides a ready platform for offering various data services which is currently at a very nascent stage. Diverse data services and rich contents have significantly boosted data traffic in developed and other emerging markets. Data communication volume per user has been growing exponentially in the last few years, with the spread of advanced services, and a richer line-up of contents.