Facebook may be in talks to buy a 10 percent stake in Indian telecom player Reliance Jio, according to a report in the Financial Times citing sources. The specifics of the deal haven't been outlined, but the paper says it could be a multi-billion dollar deal.
However, the deal appears to be on hold for now amid the global coronavirus pandemic and associated travel bans.
The Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Jio has been in operation for only about four years but has overtaken other telecom operators such as Airtel and Vodafone-Idea in the number of subscribers it has.
As of January, Reliance Jio has nearly 370 million subscribers in the country.
The company has been responsible for a shake-up in the telecom sector, after it offered cheap data plans, forcing a price war among the other telecom operators.
Jio has heavily thrived in an ecosystem, conducive for its entry back then with its 4G LTE network, while its rivals were still battling their way through legacy 2G and 3G network spread across the country.
Recently Jio has been making inroads into the fixed-line broadband space with its Jio Fiber network as well.
Recently, JioFiber broadband has launched a free-of-cost internet plan that offers speeds up to 10Mbps. Those signing up for this plan won’t have to pay any money for the service, but having said that, users will have to buy the Wi-Fi router from the company additionally, for which they will have to give Rs 1,500 as a refundable deposit.
More details on the Facebook planned investment in Jio are awaited. Watch this space.
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