Reliance Comm clocks a net profit of Rs 1,000 cr

Mumbai, Apr 30: Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Communications has posted a net profit of 612 per cent at Rs 1,000 crore for the financial year 2006-2007 and has announced a 10 per cent dividend for its shareholdes.

The company also plans to float a new Reliance vertical - Reliance Telecom Infrastructure Ltd, which will be specifically aimed towards setting up another eight thousand in addition to 12 thousand exsisting towers.

For the current quarter, the company registered an Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) of Rs 372.

Announcing the results, Anil Ambani, Chairman of the group, said ''In the beginning of the year when there were complete restructuring of the Reliance empire we faced several challenges and despite that the company has done exceedingly well.''

Anil Ambani also hinted at investing in emerging technologies such as Wi-Max, 3G and 4G in two and three tier cities, growing in non-voice calls. Taking a dig at the recent acquisition of Hutch by Vodafane he said ''We will not go for an overvalued deal in name of increasing subscriber base, instead of that we will look into the areas of providing qaulity service to our customers.'' In the current fiscal the company plans to increase its GSM base.

At present the company operates in seven telecom circles as compared to its competitors Bharti, who operates in 23 circles.

DTH and IPTV will be launched nationwide by the end of this year, Mr Ambani said and added that in the first phase IPTV will be introduced in the metroes on trial basis.

Under the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) scheme Relinace will share towers with state run telecom company BSNL.

UNI