RCom, GCX Back in Limbo After Spectrum Sale Nixed

It has been a year of chaos for Reliance Communications and GCX, but it’s not over yet. In a move that will definitely not help settle things, India’s Department of Telecommunications has denied RCom’s proposed deal to sell spectrum to Reliance Jio. Apparently the regulators won’t promise to not chase Jio for RCom’s unpaid spectrum fees.

The money from the deal would have paid off Ericsson, which has been chasing RCom in court all year for the fees it owes for managing RCom’s network. That would then have let RCom sell the company’s towers and Indian fiber network to Jio as well and unload real estate to Brookfield. Then the question of selling GCX and its subsea fiber assets would come up.

But with this decision, every step in that unwinding process may be frozen in a very precarious place. Nobody seems to know exactly what happens next, certainly I don’t. Capacity has more detail.

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Categories: Government Regulations · Mergers and Acquisitions · Undersea cables · Wireless