India’s Reliance Communications (RCom) has signed an agreement to sell its telecoms infrastructure assets to Reliance Jio Infocomm, for a total value of nearly 240 billion rupees ($3.75 billion), Reuters reported.
The companies had announced that Rcom will sell all of its spectrum, tower, fiber optic and other telecoms assets to Reliance Jio, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries. The companies did not disclose the value of the deal.
The transaction, which is subject to lenders' and other applicable approvals, is expected to close in phased manner in January-March 2018.
The deal, if finalized, would mark a big step in Reliance Communication’s quest to trim its debt, which had sent shares of the company to record lows and has led creditors such as China Development Bank (CDB) to start insolvency proceedings over missed payments.
The deal would also allow Jio, which is India’s fastest growing telco with a subscriber base of close to 140 million, to further expand into the country’s telecoms market and bolster the rollout of its wireless and FTTH services.
Through the deal, Jio gets access to four bands of spectrum and 43,000 telecom towers and a countrywide fiber optic network.
"These assets are strategic in nature and are expected to contribute significantly to the large scale roll-out of wireless and Fiber-to-Home and Enterprise services by RJIL," Reliance Jio said in a statement.