Our telecom operator earnings coverage is brought to you by OnMobile Global, India’s leading Mobile Value Added Services [VAS] company When asked whether Reliance Communications (RCOM) views Reliance Jio as a partner or a competitor during the company's Q3-FY14 earnings conference call, RCOM CEO (Wireless) Gurdeep Singh said that "there is a partnership and there is a competition" with Reliance Jio, however the go‐to‐market of both the companies remains completely separate. Singh said the Reliance Jio partnership allows the company to monetize their assets as well as lower their capex only to the electronics part in the future, since they have a reciprocity arrangement with Reliance Jio. This arrangement will provide them access to all infrastructure (fibres and towers) being laid out by Reliance Jio, at the same terms and conditions which RCOM had given earlier. For the electronics part of the capex, RCOM has an open line with the China Development Bank. Singh claims this arrangement will significantly fasten RCOM's expansion plans in the country. Remember that RCOM had inked a Rs 1,200 crore fibre optic network infrastructure sharing deal with Reliance Industry's data services venture Reliance Jio in April 2013, after months of speculation on whether the two entities were going to partner or not. This was about three years after Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries (RIL) and Anil Ambani's Reliance Group had scrapped all its non-compete agreements signed at the time of Reliance Group's split in 2006. As part of the agreement, Reliance Jio Infocomm was allowed to make use of multiple fiber pairs across RCOM’s 1,20,000 KM inter-city fiber…
