RIL acquires Infotel, aims to focus on broadband services opportunity in India

Source RIL:

The Indian telecom landscape in India is certainly set for a major overhaul in terms of competitive environment with India’s richest person Mukesh Ambani set to re-enter the telecom field through the BWA services route.

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries (RIL) has acquired 95% stake in Infotel Broadband Services owned by the Nahatas. The investment is valued at Rs.4,800 crore and will be way of subscription to fresh equity capital at par to be issued by Infotel Broadband.

Post completion of the acquisition, Infotel Broadband will become a subsidiary of RIL.

The company aims to use the BWA spectrum to offer broadband speed mobile data services as well rich-media content.

“RIL’s initiative will usher in a wireless broadband revolution in both, the urban and

the rural areas all across the country by providing end-to-end data solutions for

business enterprises, social organizations, educational and healthcare institutions

and Indian consumers. This will give a fillip to rural upliftment by seamlessly

connecting information and markets to the rural population on a real-time basis and

will help bridge the rural-urban divide in terms of access to knowledge and

information,” said the company.

Commenting on the initiative, Mr. Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director

of Reliance Industries Limited said, “We see this as the next wave of value creation

opportunity in the wireless broadband space. We believe this will pole-vault India’s economy into the digital world at an accelerated pace while creating next generation tools that will enhance productivity and create world=class consumer experiences.”

Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications (RCom) which backed out off the BWA auctions in favour of Infotel announced that it too welcomes the entry of RIL in the Indian telecom field. "We welcome the entry of Reliance Industries into the high potential wireless broadband space. As leading telecom infrastructure and content service providers, we look forward to offering our services to RIL and other BWA players, even while we compete for customers in the marketplace through our choice of different technologies,” said a company statement from RCom.

Read more >>

World’s first voice-blogging service by Airtel

Source: Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel launched a new voice-based social networking blog, Airtel Blog which is believed to be world’s first voice-blogging service. Airtel says that almost 2 million users have already used the service since 3 months of launch of the service.

Users of the service can share voice updates through the mobile medium.

“Perhaps one of our fastest growing Value Added Services in our stable in recent times, Airtel Blog is taking the concept of micro-blogging to an entirely new level,” said Atul Bindal, President-Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel. “As a nation, we love to verbalise and reach out to our social network of friends, families or pursued interests and Airtel Blog enables this added intimacy on the customer’s mobile phone. Some have called Airtel Blog ‘Twitter with a voice’ but we are simply calling it a game changer.”

Airtel says that celebrities including Amitabh Bachchan, Arshad Warsi, Lara Dutta, Neetu Chandra, VJ Ranvijay and Sonu Nigam.

The voice-based blog service is powered by Bubble Motion which offers voice messaging and social communication solutions for mobile phones........

Read more >>