Reliance Communications (RCom) has received approval from fair trade regulator Competition Commission of India (CCI) to acquire Russian conglomerate Sistema’s Indian telecom unit, Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL) that operates under the MTS brand. The deal will give RCom access to spectrum or airwaves in the 850 Mhz band that can be used for 4G services which it plans to start by the year-end.
In November, India’s leading telecom operator RCom announced acquisition of Sistema’s Indian telecom unit in an all-stock deal that will create an operator with 118 million subscribers. As per the deal, SSTL will hold about 10 per cent stake in RCom and pay off its existing debt before closing the deal.
SSTL offers mobile telephony services under the MTS brand across nine telecom circles in the country, while RCom is India’s foremost and truly integrated telecommunications service provider. The company, with a customer base of about 150 million, including over 2.5 million individual overseas retail customers, ranks among the Top 4 Telecom companies in the world by number of customers in a single country.
