Reliance's Flag Telecom bags deal in China

New Delhi, Jul 10: Flag Telecom, the global arm of the Anil Ambani promoted Reliance Communications, has won a multi-million dollar deal for providing international bandwidth to China Netcom, a leading integrated telecom service provider.

Under this contract, Flag Telecom would provide close to 50 GB of high quality international bandwidth for the retail broadband operations of the Chinese telecom major, and will also act as a link between China to West coast of the US, sources said.

The deal, among the largest across the pacific, is estimated to be close to 35 million dollars.

Earlier this week, Reliance Group Chairman Anil Ambani had visited four countries in the Middle East where he signed deals that would generate revenues of over 150 million dollars on the Reliance Communications' soon-to-be-launched FALCON cable.

This mega deal across the pacific comes shortly after the Reliance Group bagged the largest enterprise deal across the trans-Atlantic, under which it would provide 150-200 GB of international bandwidth for the fast growing retail broadband operations of Deutsche Telekom AG.

FLAG Telecom has emerged as the ''preferred carrier'' for large telecom operators banking on the growth of broadband in their respective countries by beating global majors like Cable&Wireless, Singtel and the home-grown VSNL.

Mr Anil Ambani had met up with senior level delegations of OmanTel, ITC-Saudi, Bahrain's Batelco and Ministry of Telecommunications Kuwait, where plans of enabling the broadband revolution in the Oil-rich states were discussed.

After a bitter battle, FLAG had approached the International Chambers of Commerce with an arbitration, which was recently awarded in favor of FLAG Telecom.

UNI