Infotel Broadband Services (Infotel), a
subsidiary of Reliance Industries, has picked up a 38.5 percent stake in
Extramarks Education, a company focused on school education and digital learning.
The investment in Extramarks has been made
through an affiliate company Reliance Strategic Investments.
The investment by Infotel will enable
Extramarks pursue its aggressive growth plans in further developing services
and wider market penetration.
Extramarks’ digital distribution model will
provide invaluable services to the student community across age groups
including education support and study help at affordable prices.
Reliance Industries plans to offer
high-speed data services on attractively priced tablets by early next year and
scale it up to a countrywide network by the middle of 2012.
The company plans to offer
fourth-generation or 4G-enabled data cards that can be plugged into computers
and laptops, apart from providing tablets at a game-changing price of 3,000 or
even lower to hook customers, according to Economic Times.
RIL has also initiated talks with media and
entertainment companies, including Walt Disney’s Indian venture UTV Software,
to acquire content for its wireless broadband offerings. A deal with Walt
Disney, which is close to being finalised, will enable the company to offer
games, entertainment and applications for the younger customers.
RIL has also initiated talks with Reliance
Communications to hire the infrastructure for its 4G foray using TD-LTE
technology, according to Economic Times.
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, 2.77 KM optical
fibre network and over 1 million retails outlets (including company-owned,
franchisee and distributors).
India is becoming a major mobile broadband
market.
“With underdeveloped fixed broadband
infrastructure, the Indian Government hopes to achieve higher broadband
penetration through wireless broadband. The initial launch of 4G LTE service is
expected in early 2012, with Reliance, Aircel, and Bharti Airtel already
announcing their firm commitment for the same,” said Abhishek Chauhan,
senior consultant, Information and Communications Technology Practice, Frost
& Sullivan, South Asia and Middle East.
However, the service launch will be limited
to only a few metros and major cities, with nationwide rollouts expected only
in 2013-2014. LTE subscribers in the country are estimated to grow at a CAGR of
258.9 per cent in the next five to seven years. LTE revenues are expected to
grow at a CAGR of 220.5 per cent over the same period.
By Baburajan K
