Reliance Communications will invest $60 million in Saudi Arabia to connect the kingdom and other Gulf states with 53 countries around the globe on its fibre optic network and provide value-added services to its network users.
The investment to set up submarine fibre optic cable landing stations in Alkhobar and Jeddah for facilitating access to international bandwidth was made through the FlAG Telecom, part of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, under its Falcon Project.
The Reliance Communications and its Saudi partner hailed the investment which comes in the wake of the landmark visit of Saudi King Abdullah to India in January.
More investments are expected to follow as both sides explore the possibility of diversifying their relations through strategic alliance.
The deal was unveiled in the presence of Anil Ambani, Punit Garg, president of FlAG Telecom, a Reliance subsidiary, and Mohammed Hasan Omar, president and CEO of Integrated Telecom Co Ltd (ITC) at its headquarters in Jeddah.
The Falcon project will connect the Gulf countries, including the kingdom, to India from the east, Egypt from the west as also with the rest of the world, Garg said.
The entire project would be completed before October. The two landing stations would be constructed one in Alkhobar, already operational and the other in Jeddah, which will be completed next month.
"We are exploring the possibility of strategic partnership options and to reinforce alliance with ITC," Garg was quoted in the Arab News as saying.
Omar said the deal would enable ITC to offer international access capacity in the kingdom. "This also marks the launch of our commercial services to the market -- the international bandwith and the last mile connectivity services to ISPs for wireless, fiber optic and other value-added services," he said.
This will put ITC on the global map and facilitate access for Saudi customers to any of the 53 countries served by the Reliance Group covering 200,000 km fibre cable network in India and across the globe.
Omar said the presence of Ambani in the kingdom was intended to reassure the ITC management his company's full support to the ITC-FlAG Telecom joint venture project.
There was no global connectivity from the GCC countries. Saudi Arabia and the UAE were the only countries where the submarine cables were available for connectivity to the global network.
"We are working on a virtual data centre to provide access to global data network. We are working on setting up a regional internet center here which could be used by other countries in the region as a hub," he added.
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