Mumbai, June 11: The King is back.

Mukesh Ambani has signalled his return into the telecom space after scooping up a 95 per cent stake in Infotel Broadband Services Pvt Ltd — the little-known Anant Nahata-owned company, which today bagged the only pan-India licence for wireless broadband spectrum after a 16-day bidding frenzy.

The elder Ambani scion —the fourth-richest man in the world with a net worth estimated at $29 billion by Forbes magazine — is re-entering the telecom arena five years after he handed over Reliance Communications to brother Anil as part of the demerger of the Ambani group in 2005.

On Friday, RIL acquired 95 per cent in Infotel Broadband Services for Rs 4,800 crore.

The RIL scrip closed 3 per cent higher at Rs 1,046.25 on the BSE.

Ambani’s foray into telecom comes just three weeks after the warring brothers agreed to scrap a clutch of agreements signed in 2006 that obliged them to respect the exclusive domains of operation for 10 years. The truce signalled the end to a bitter five-year battle that has largely been waged in courts.

The senior Ambani is hoping to usher in a 4G revolution next year by placing his bets on cutting-edge technologies that will change the way retail subscribers and corporate customers download data, streaming video and movies.

“We see this as the next wave of value creation opportunity in the wireless broadband space. We believe this will pole-vault India’s economy into the digital world at an accelerated pace while creating next-generation tools that will enhance productivity and create world class consumer experiences,” said RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani.

The Indian broadband industry is at a nascent stage with a subscriber base of just 8.75 million as of March.

Sources said RIL would offer the two competing technologies — WiMax and long term evolution (LTE), which is a forerunner to 4G radio technologies designed to increase the capacity and speed of mobile telephone networks.

RIL plans to offer WiMax to corporate and enterprise customers next year. RIL will simultaneously tap the vast retail market that uses data cards of telecom providers by offering the LTE technology, sources said.

A broadband wireless service using LTE will offer speeds of up to 100 megabits per second, which will allow users to download a full-length feature movie in about five minutes that would normally take around 30 minutes. At present, high-speed data cards offer just 3.1Mbps download speed.

RIL said it would provide India the leap into the “forefront of countries providing world-class 4G network and services”.

Reliance is, however, planning to adopt “an asset-light strategy” and intends to forge alliances with a host of global technology players, service and infrastructure providers, application developers and device manufacturers as it tries to whip up the 4G revolution.

Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Communications, which dropped out of the BWA auction 10 days ago when the bidding turned fierce, welcomed RIL’s entry into the telecom space. “We welcome the entry of RIL into the high-potential wireless broadband space. As leading telecom infrastructure and content service providers, we look forward to offering our services to RIL and other BWA players, even while we compete for customers in the marketplace through our choice of different technologies,” said a spokesperson for the Reliance ADA group.

Nishna Biyani, telecom analyst at brokerage Prabhudas Lilladher, said it would take around two years for an operator to start commercial rollout of LTE technology.

He added that the BSW spectrum could be used to provide a wireless alternative to cable and DSL for last mile broadband access and also to offer triple play services that include Internet/data, voice (VoIP) and IPTV.