Reliance Unveils Rural Initiative

MUMBAI -- Reliance Communications, India's largest dual network operator and one of India's biggest telecom player has introduced major strategic initiatives aimed at growing the mobile telecom and internet penetration in Rural India. This is in line with the company's objective of bridging the Digital Divide.

Over the last six years, since the inception of Reliance Communications, the company has achieved significant success in making mobile telephony affordable to millions of Indians in India. This was one of the key drivers of India's enhanced rural tele-density from 1.5% in March 2003 to 14.80% in March 2009.

RCOM's rural enabler blue-print is based on a three-pronged strategy. Drive internet penetration across rural and sub-urban terrain, thrust on high impact machine-to-machine solutions, and provide value-added services specific to rural needs under GrameenVAS initiative across 500,000 villages.

Commenting on its rural initiatives, Mr S P Shukla, President - Wireless, Reliance Communications said, "The Indian telecom wireless rural subscriber base is now over 125 million. The next wave of telecom growth is emerging from rural India. With rural base expected to double in the next few years, RCOM is committed to drive this exponential growth through innovative and ground breaking service offerings and tariffs."

According to Mr Mahesh Prasad, President - MDCS, Reliance Communications said, "Mobile is rapidly overcoming the challenge of universal access in rural areas. Our goal is to offer to this large rural population across India, innovative products and services customized for rural & local needs. Rural markets offer significant as well as large-scale opportunity to tap highly potential but relatively unaddressed market topography."

Reliance Communications Ltd.