Telecom News -- telco's showcase

RCOM announces financial results for Q1

Mumbai, July 31, 2009: Reliance Communications Limited (RCOM) today announced its unaudited consolidated financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2009.

Highlights of the financial performance for the year are:

• Net Profit at Rs. 1,637 crore (US$ 342 million), higher by 8.3% compared to Net Profit of Rs. 1,512 crore (US$ 352 million) in the corresponding quarter last year.
  
  
• EBITDA at Rs. 2,453 crore (US$ 512 million), growth of 9.0%. EBITDA margin stable at 39.9% with strong contributions across all businesses – Wireless, Global and Enterprise
  
  
• Revenue growth of 15.5% at Rs. 6,145 crore (US$ 1,283 million) from Rs. 5,322 crore (US$ 1,240 million).

Commenting on the results, Mr Anil Dhirubhai Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Communications Limited, said:
“Successful commercial launch of nationwide GSM services and other new initiatives across all our businesses to drive profitable & sustainable growth at Reliance Communications.”

CORPORATE DEVELOPMENTS

RITL announced long term telecom infrastructure sharing agreement with Etisalat DB

Reliance Infratel (RITL), subsidiary of RCOM signed a long term agreement with Etisalat DB, a new wireless mobile services provider for sharing its telecom infrastructure. The agreement will enhance RCOM’s revenue by Rs. 10,000 crores (US$ 2.2 bn) which includes revenue from sharing of end-to-end tower and transmission infrastructure. The geographical scope of the deal covers 15 telecom circles which constitutes over 85% of India’s population and over 90% of subscribers and revenue market in India.

The deal provides Etisalat DB the advantage of faster roll-out with the coverage comparable to the incumbents. The deal also enables Etisalat DB to adopt an asset light model by converting most of the capex into opex. RCOM can potentially sign agreement for sharing other infrastructure elements like Bandwidth/Fibre, domestic and International long distance carriage services, collocation of BSC & other core network equipments which would be a further upside to this agreement.

RCOM KRIBHCO JV to forge rural marketing

KRIBHCO Reliance Kisan Limited, JV Company is the first of its kind to bridge urban-rural divide. The JV will leverage KRIBHCO’s wide distribution network which covers 72% of the Indian population through 25,000 co-operative, 6,300 member co-operative and 60 ‘Krishi Seva Kendras’ to promote rural telephony in India. The JV will market telecom & non-telecom products and services in rural India which includes Reliance Mobile (GSM & CDMA) services and DTH services, products & services of Reliance Capital, Entertainment and other customised products for rural India.

RCOM Alcatel Lucent Managed Network Services JV

RCOM Alcatel Lucent JV completed 1 year of operations with strong accomplishments. In just 1 year, the deal size of the JV crosses Rs. 3,600 crores and demonstrated its capability to achieve the operational cost saving of 20-25%. The JV manages RCOM’s GSM & CDMA network covering 22 circles, 20,000 towns, 5 lakh villages catering to over 80 million customers. The JV is one of the largest multi-vendor managed services deal in the world and first for multi-technology managed services in India (both GSM & CDMA). The JV would continue to focus on process improvements and business development opportunities in India and globally.

Reliance Mobile is “India’s most trusted service brand”

Reliance Mobile is rated as “India’s most trusted service brand” by Economic Times Brand Equity survey 2009.

-END-