Two days after announcing the completon of a transaction to sell some of its physical assets to Reliance Jio, Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications said it has sold its fibre-based assets to Jio.
Like in the previous case, the company did not specifically mention the amount that it would generate from the transaction, but said the sold assets are “worth” Rs 3,000 cr.
“With successful completion of the Fibre monetization transaction, 1,78,000 kms fibre stand transferred to RJIO,” it said.
Reliance Jio may not have an immediate benefit from the transaction, as it already had the right to use RCom’s fiber assets under a previous sharing agreement.
However, the fiber assets are likely to come in hand for its Jio Gigafiber rollout.
RCom’s fiber assets, which were the biggest in India at one time, were put in place under the leadership of Mukesh Ambani, who now heads Reliance Jio, when the two groups were a single entity.
Back under a single entity, the fiber network is likely to be again India’s biggest, even as the combined Vodafone-Idea fiber backbone is also likely to be quite comparable in size.
RCom is in the process of selling its mobile and consumer facing assets, such as towers, part of its fiber network, spectrum and some real estate, to raise about Rs 25,000 cr to pay back its creditors.
On Thursday, Reliance Communications said it completed the sale of assets worth around Rs 2,000 cr to Reliance Jio Infocomm under the broader asset sale agreement. RCom sold what it calls ‘media convergence nodes’ or MCNs and related infrastructure assets.