WCA January 2012

India

voice services to RIL and the latter will bundle this with its broadband or 4G data offerings. Reliance Industries Ltd – India Email : info@ril.com Website : www.ril.com Policy unveiling a month later than expected The National Telecom Policy-2011 will be unveiled this month (January), Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal has said. The policy was expected to be unveiled by December last year, but delays in receiving recommendations caused the delay. “Industry wants some more time to respond, we will give them time. All that will happen is finalisation of the policy will happen in January instead of December,” Mr Sibal said in New Delhi. He added that Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s recommendations on the National Telecom Policy have just come in and the Department of Telecommunication is looking into the same. “The TRAI recommendations have just come, we will consider them,” added Mr Sibal. He added said the media is confusing between TRAI’s recommendations and the Telecom Policy.
 “People must understand the difference between policy and TRAI’s recommendation. The TRAI recommendations deal with the nitty-gritty of mergers and acquisition and all the other specific issues which never go in to policy,” he added. Multi-million investment for its own cables India’s Tata Power Company – the country’s largest private power distributor – plans to invest around Rs 1,000 crore (US$217m) over the next three years to lay its own cable network in Mumbai. TPC executive director Sankaranarayanan Padmanabhan said the company uses the wire networks of BEST and Reliance Infrastructure to distribute electricity in the city and suburbs, respectively. Prior to a Supreme Court order, the company was not allowed to provide a parallel network, but now it can roll out its own network.

during the quarter compared to Rs 11,123 crore last year.


The steel maker plans to spend just under Rs 14,700 in the current fiscal year on capacity expansion projects as part of a programme to swell total capacity at its five integrated plants to 21.4 million tonnes by March 2013. The impact of higher costs was partially offset by higher sales volumes, and an increase in net sales realisation to Rs 36,230 per tonne during the July-September quarter against Rs 31,320 a year-ago, Verma said.

 Elaborating on the steel maker’s joint venture with South Korean major POSCO, Verma said talks with the Korean company were “positive” but refused to give any time frame for signing the agreement. “We are having a dialogue on a very, very positive note.”

The two firms plan to set up a plant to produce three million tonnes a year of auto-grade steel, but they are yet to agree on the shareholding pattern in the Rs 16,000-crore joint venture. Steel Authority of India Ltd – India Fax : +91 011 243 67015 Email : sailco@vsnl.com Website : www.sail.co.in Family deal to keep the network connected? In a move that may bring the two Ambani brothers closer, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd is in talks to hire the infrastructure of younger sibling Anil’s firm RCom for its telecom foray. According to sources in the know, Anil Ambani-led RCom will be providing all infrastructure towers, fibre, backhaul as well as its national and international long distance facilities to RIL’s high-speed broadband services. RCom has 50,000 towers, 2.77km optical fibre network and over one million retails outlets (including company-owned, franchisee and distributors). According to market reports, Reliance Industries (RIL) is initially looking at about 30,000 towers. If this deal goes through, it will positively impact valuation of RCom’s tower arm, for which the company is in talks with PE firms to sell the majority stake of 95%.

According to sources, RCom might also provide wholesale

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Tata Power Company – India Fax : +91 226 665 8801 Email : info@tatapower.com Website : www.tatapower.com

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Wire & Cable ASIA – January/February 2012