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Reliance aims for 100m mobile subscribers

India’s Reliance Communications, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, is aiming to become one of the world’s top five mobile phone operators by user numbers as it plans to increase its subscribers by one third to 100m by the end of this year.

S.P. Shukla, chief executive of Reliance’s wireless division, said it reported a record increase in subscribers in the first quarter after it launched a network based on the GSM standard.

“We have a goal,” he told the Financial Times. “We should have 100m customers before the end of the year. That will take us into the top five in the world.”

Reliance is presently the world’s seventh-largest operator with about 75m subscribers.

Its lofty ambitions, which would place it in the top ranks alongside Vodafone, China Mobile and China Unicom, as well as Indian rival Bharti Airtel, reflect the rapid expansion of India’s mobile market.

With 350m subscribers, India has overtaken China as the fastest-growing mobile market, adding more than 10m subscribers each month.

It is considered the last frontier for mobile companies, with Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo and Telenor slugging it out for market share with domestic groups such as Bharti and Reliance.

Reliance tried last year to merge with South Africa’s MTN in a deal that would have been worth up to $40bn.

The attempt was scuppered after Mr Ambani’s estranged older brother, Mukesh, threatened legal action to block it as part of a family business dispute.

Since then, Reliance has been pursuing organic growth, rolling out the GSM network in 11,000 cities and 200,000 villages before opening it in earnest for business at the beginning of this year.

The group has an existing network based on the CDMA standard.

In the past three months, Reliance has added 11.3m subscribers, nearly 9m of them on the GSM network – a figure Mr Shukla described as a “record” for a single company.

Reliance attracted many of the subscribers through an offer under which it gave free minutes to new users.

Reliance’s launch has ruffled the feathers of Vodafone, Bharti Airtel and others that have been using GSM technology.

They argued that since spectrum in India was scarce, with much of it locked up by the defence industry, Reliance should not have been allowed to obtain a GSM licence.

Источник: Financial Times

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