RIYADH, 27 June 2006 — Anil Ambani, chairman of the Reliance Group, one of India’s biggest companies, has made $60 million investment in the Kingdom for setting up two submarine fiber optic cable landing stations in Alkhobar and Jeddah for facilitating access to international bandwidth and providing value-added services to the users.
The investment was made through FlAG Telecom, Reliance’s subsidiary in London, under its Falcon project that will connect the Kingdom and other Gulf states with 53 countries around the world served by the Reliance fiber optic cable network.
Both the Reliance Group and its Saudi partner hailed the investment which comes in the wake of the landmark visit of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah to India on Jan. 26. More investments are expected to follow as both sides explore the possibility of diversifying their relations through strategic alliance.
The road map for Falcon Project was laid out in the presence of Anil Ambani, Punit Garg, president of FlAG Telecom, a Reliance subsidiary, and Dr. Mohammed Hasan Omar, president and CEO of Integrated Telecom Co. Ltd. (ITC) at ITC’s headquarters here.
Anil Ambani, India’s fourth richest man with a net worth of $5.5 billion, made a flying visit to Riyadh aboard his private jet and left after a four-hour stay. He did not speak to newsmen except to shake hands with them. When told that everyone, including the Indian Embassy, was caught unaware by his air dash, he quipped: “I am so happy.”
Besides greatly enhancing the international bandwidth capacity from the current level of 8-10 gigabytes to 2.56 terabytes (1 tb=1,000 gbs), the Falcon Project will provide a host of value-added services such as video-on-demand, triple play (audio, video, data), video conferencing services on a commercial basis.
Spelling out the details of the Falcon Project, Garg said it will connect the Gulf countries, including the Kingdom, to India from the east, Egypt from the west, and the rest of the world. The entire Falcon project would be completed before October this year. These two landing stations would be constructed — one in Alkhobar, which is already operational, and the other in Jeddah to be completed next month.
“We are also exploring the possibility of strategic partnership options and to reinforce alliance with ITC,” Garg said.
Explaining the significance of the landmark event, Dr. Omar said it would enable ITC to offer international access capacity to their clients 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.
Under the arrangement, according to Waleem Abulsalam, vice president, commercial operations, ITC will pay FlAG charges for the use of the two landing stations for the next 15 years.
Garg said their first step in this direction is to establish an international gateway for fiber optic cable network. “The first landing station has been operational in Alkhobar, while the second one will be up and running in Jeddah next month. 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 fiber cable network in India and across the globe.”
He 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 center 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.