New Delhi: Debt-laden Reliance Communications’ (RCom) proposal to sell infrastructure assets including towers, optic fibre cable and spectrum to Reliance Jio has been cleared by the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
“@CCI_India approves acquisition of RCOM’s towers, optic fiber cable, right to use spectrum and media convergence nodes by RJIO,” the anti-trust regulator tweeted. In December 2017, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio had signed a pact to acquire the mobile business assets that includes spectrum, mobile towers and optical fibre network of RCom-owned by his younger brother Anil Ambani.
While neither Jio nor RCom had divulged the size of the deal, people in the know have pegged the transaction value at Rs18,000 crore. RCom statement, at that time, had said the deal packs in 122.4MHz of 4G spectrum in the 800/900/1800/2100 MHz bands, over 43,000 towers, 1,78,000 kilometres of fibre and 248 media convergence nodes.
At the time of the deal announcement, the companies had also said that the transaction is likely to be completed in a phased manner by March 2018. However, an arbitration panel in an interim order recently, has restrained RCom from asset sale or transfer, without its “specific permission”.
Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.
