With the Ambani brothers deciding to smoke the peace pipe, speculation is rife on whether the deal between Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications and South African telecom major MTN would be resurrected.
Earlier this month, the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries and Anil Ambani Group had agreed to dump their differences and scrap all non-compete agreements, saying this would eliminate any room for further “disputes” between them.
In a report, Financial Times wondered whether the RCom-MTN deal could be resurrected?
Reportedly, the proposed deal in 2008 with MTN had failed after RIL challenged RCom’s right to offload a controlling stake to the South African entity, claiming the right of first refusal.
According to reports, some believe a deal could be revived. MTN is expected to hold a board meeting as early as on Tuesday in which it would discuss a proposal to buy assets in Algeria. “With that deal running into trouble amid objections from Algeria, there is speculation that the MTN board will also review its India strategy at the meeting,” the report noted.
***
BWA bid touches Rs 7,221cr
age CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi
The price of a single pan-India wireless broadband (BWA) spectrum on Monday reached Rs 7,221 crore. This means that the government will get at least Rs 21,664 crore from the auction of BWA only.
The total revenue from the auction of both 3G and BWA spectrum has now reached a hefty Rs 90,000 crore.
Within six days of the BWA auction, the price of the BWA license has jumped by 312 per cent from the base price of Rs 1,750 crore from which the auction had started.
There is still strong excess demand in key circles of Delhi and Mumbai at six. The intensity in bidding in the BWA auction is much more than it was in case of 3G spectrum. There are 11 players in the race for two blocks of BWA spectrum, which has been put on sale. There were nine operators for the 3 to 4 slots of 3G spectrum.