New Delhi, April 23: Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Jio Infocomm today teamed up with Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Airtel to use the latter’s i2i submarine cable network to provide data connectivity across the Asia-Pacific region.

Analysts said the deal was the poosible start of a partnership on many areas between the two rival groups.

Mumbai-based Reliance Jio Infocomm will use the dedicated capacity of Bharti’s i2i undersea cable that connects India and Singapore to reach out to customers in the Asia-Pacific, the two firms said in a joint statement. The deal will connect Reliance Jio directly to the world’s major business hubs and Internet service providers, helping it to meet the bandwidth demand and offer very fast data experience .

The statement said the two companies would consider other “mutual areas of co-operation and development to leverage their respective assets”. However, the executives were wary of providing any financial details of the deal.

For the Mukesh Ambani group, this is the second peace deal in a month. Earlier this month, RIL had forged a Rs 1,200-crore deal to share Anil Ambani-promoted Reliance Communications (R-Com) fibre optic network for Reliance Jio’s 4G telecom venture.

Reliance Jio, formerly Infotel Broadband, won pan-India 4G spectrum in 2010, but the company is yet to launch the services.

It has already been assigned 10,000 mobile numbers it needs to test its 4G services. It has also been given 4,000 numbers in Delhi and Mumbai, where it plans to launch its services first.

According to industry players, Mittal has agreed to let rival Reliance Jio use its cable link not only because Bharti Airtel has surplus capacity but also to forge a long-term partnership with a powerful group against other competitors.

Airtel’s international infrastructure includes the ownership of i2i submarine cable system; consortium ownership of SMW4 undersea cable linking Singapore, Chennai, Mumbai and west Europe; and new cable system investments such as Asia America Gateway (AAG), Europe India Gateway (EIG) and East Africa Submarine System (EASSy).

It also has terrestrial express connectivity to Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan and China.

Mittal Uganda buy

Bharti Airtel today announced that it had entered into a “definitive agreement” with Abu Dhabi-based Warid Group to fully acquire Warid Telecom Uganda.

The agreement is subject to regulatory and statutory approvals.

Airtel said the latest investment would consolidate its position as the second largest mobile operator in Uganda with a combined customer base of over 7.4 million and a market share of over 39 per cent.

Three years back, Bharti had bought over Warid’s operations in Bangladesh.

Warid Telecom is a unit of the $10-billion Abu Dhabi Group, an investment fund owned by the members of the Abu Dhabi royal family. It has invested billions in building and operating mobile networks in Africa and Asia.

Bharti had earlier bought the African mobile networks of Kuwait-based Zain for $9 billion.

Since then, the company is believed to have invested at least $3-4 billion in that continent.