Reflecting brotherly love, Anil compliments Mukesh on telecom

NEW DELHI: The infamous Ambani battles appear to be a thing of past as Anil Ambani today welcomed his elder brother Mukesh-led RIL's entry into the telecom space.

And as if not to compete with RIL, which acquired the sole pan-India broadband licensee Infotel, Anil's group firm Reliance Communication exited the 16-day long wireless spectrum auction a week ago.

Even a whiff of coming together of the two brothers has seen share prices of their group companies soaring and the latest gesture by Anil Ambani prompted market watchers to wonder if this was the beginning of the coming together of the two billionaire brothers, who made headlines for the last six years for their bitter fights.

"We welcome the entry of Reliance Industries into the high potential Wireless Broadband space," an Anil Ambani group spokesperson said, within hours of RIL announcing acquisition of Infotel for Rs 4,800 crore.

As a result of the deal, RIL would also have to pay Rs 12,872 crore to the government towards 20 Mhz spectrum.

Incidentally, RCom was a major bidder for 5 Mhz spectrum for 3G telecom services and acquired the most number of circles including the prized Mumbai and Delhi, for over Rs 8,000 crore.

"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 market place through our choice of different technologies," RCom said in a statement.

The statement assumes significance in the wake of a truce signed by both Mukesh and Anil to end the non-compete agreement, which was part of the family settlement to divide Reliance empire in June 2005. Differences had cropped up much before.

"RIL and Reliance ADA group are hopeful and confident that all these steps would create an overall environment of harmony, cooperation and collaboration between the two groups, thereby further enhancing overall shareholder value for shareholders of both the groups," the two Ambani groups had said in identical statements last month.
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