CORPORATE NEWS:
Reliance acquires Flag Telecom
Flag Telecom Group Ltd, UK, a leading provider of international wholesale network transport and communications services, has been bought by Reliance Gateway Net Private Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Infocomm Ltd, India. Reliance Gateway is acquiring 100% of Flag's common shares on a fully diluted basis for $207m. The amalgamation agreement has been approved by the board of directors of both companies, although the deal is subject to certain conditions.
During the late 1990s, Flag Telecom laid a 50,000km network of undersea cable across the globe. The optical fibre network connects key business markets in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the USA. Flag has an established customer base of more than 180 leading operators, including all of the top 10 international carriers. The global network includes:
- FLAG Europe-Asia: the world’s longest privately funded undersea fibre optic cable system stretching more than 28,000km from the UK to Japan with landing sites in 13 countries;
- FLAG Atlantic-1: one of the world’s first multi-terabit transoceanic dual cable system (14,500km long) providing a fully protected city-to-city service between London, Paris and New York
- FLAG North Asian Loop: stretching 9,504km, it has been designed to support the strong growth in intra-Asia Internet traffic and provides intra-regional, city-to-city connectivity between Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo and Taipei.
Flag Telecom Group Ltd also offers a range of products including global bandwidth, IP, internet, Ethernet, and co-location services, and the acquisition will give Reliance a larger network capacity to expand its voice, data and digital services. This, When consummated, the Flag Telecom acquisition will be the first international acquisition by Reliance and the largest such international acquisition in the services sector by an Indian company. FLAG’s global fibre ptic network will complement Reliance’s next generation digital network in India and enable Reliance to serve its customers world-wide more effectively by offering end-to-end solutions.
In December 2002, Reliance Group created Reliance Infocomm, which has built a 60,000km fibre optic network linking more than 600 cities and towns in India. The goal of Reliance Infocomm is to progressively expand its fibre optic network and eventually cover 116,000km, with the ability to seamlessly connect every individual, home, and office in all 640,000 villages and 2,500 towns and cities of India.
Company: |
Reliance Infocomm |
Country: |
India |
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+91 22 2204 2268 |
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Website: |
www.ril.com |