Reliance Industries pays $1B for stake in winning India broadband bidder Infotel

Reliance Ind. pays $1B for India broadband winner

MUMBAI, India — Reliance Industries will pay 48 billion rupees ($1 billion) for a 95 percent stake in Infotel Broadband, the only company to win pan-India broadband wireless spectrum in a government auction Friday.

The announcement from India’s most valuable company came hours after the government closed the 16-day bidding process, which the Press Trust of India said yielded 383 billion rupees ($8.2 billion) in spectrum fees.

Add that haul to the $14.6 billion India raked in from third-generation spectrum auctions less than a month ago, and the central government could shave a chunk off its projected 4.0 trillion rupee ($85.5 billion) fiscal deficit.

Reliance Industries, a retailing-to-gas conglomerate run by India’s richest man, is jumping into telecommunications as the sector struggles with skyrocketing costs, an uncertain regulatory environment and fierce competition.

A month ago, managing director Mukesh Ambani, who has long been interested in telecom, couldn’t have done it.

In late May, he and his estranged younger brother, Anil, said they would scrap a contentious noncompete clause in a family agreement after the Supreme Court ordered them to renegotiate the terms of a gas sale deal also enshrined in the family memorandum, which divided their late father’s sprawling empire.

The detente has resulted in a flurry of dealmaking, with Anil’s Reliance Communications, India’s No.2 telecom, courting investors from AT&T to Dubai’s Etisalat.

Now, for the first time, the Ambani brothers are going head to head.

But analysts say India’s once-golden telecom industry — which is still adding about 20 million new mobile phone subscribers a month — now faces an uncertain future.

The government, says PricewaterhouseCoopers executive director Sandeep Ladda, “has tasted blood.”

“Price escalation for additional spectrum is going to be at a heavy cost, where revenues will not necessarily match,” he said.

Profit margins are shrinking in India, where 15 operators have driven the cost of calls down to less than 1 cent a minute in some places.

Proposed regulatory changes that would levy hefty fees on existing players and further restrict consolidation among dominant companies have also caused jitters.

Two of India’s largest operators — Vodafone and Reliance Communications, both of which paid dearly for 3G spectrum — dropped their broadband bids as prices skyrocketed.

Vodafone said prices “went beyond rational levels owing considerably to the artificial scarcity of spectrum with just two slots available and 11 bidders in the fray.”

Anil’s Reliance Communications said “auction prices significantly exceeded its business case estimates.”

Ladda said they were right to bow out. India has far fewer broadband wireless subscribers than voice customers and the market is slower-growing, he said.

It is going to be difficult for the winners to “to build up a business case for paying such an extremely hefty amount,” he said. “It’s going to be difficult for them to be viable over time.”

Unlisted Infotel agreed to pay 128.5 billion rupees ($2.7 billion) for pan-India spectrum. The broadband spectrum can be used for data services — like connecting a computer to the internet wirelessly — but not for mobile phone voice calls.

“When bid prices started to get higher we realized we needed to talk to a strategic partner,” Infotel director Anant Nahata told India’s CNBC-TV18.

Infotel will become a subsidiary of Reliance Industries. A Reliance Industries spokesman said the $1 billion could be supplemented with debt to make the spectrum payment.

“We believe this will pole-vault India’s economy into the digital world at an accelerated pace,” Mukesh Ambani said in a statement.

Market leader Bharti Airtel and U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm each bought broadband wireless spectrum in four geographical areas, while the Aircel group, which is majority owned by Malaysia’s Maxis Communications Berhad, bought in eight areas, the Department of Telecommunications said in a statement.