Reliance Communications sells nodes worth Rs 2,000 crore to Jio

Reliance Communications has competed sale of its media convergence nodes (MCNs) and related infrastructure assets, worth Rs 2,000 crore, to Reliance Jio Infocomm (Jio ), which will be the first tranche of payments in the operator’s asset sale.
“With the successful completion of the MCN monetization transaction, 248 MCNs covering 5 million sq. ft. of area, used for hosting the telecom infrastructure, stand transferred to RJIO,” said the Anil Ambani owned operator.

Shares of RCom were up by 1.97% at Rs 19.14 during early trade on BSE.

This will be the first tranche of assets sold to Mukesh Ambani owned Jio, as part of RCom’s asset monetisation program to reduce its debt of Rs 46,000 crore.

Rcom expects to raise about Rs 18,000 crore by selling the wireless assets to Jio and real estate assets to Canada’s Brookfield, and reduce its debt by repaying its 39 lenders.

Recently the company said that it would sell an additional 65 MHz spectrum in the 800 MHz band to Jio for Rs 3,500-3,700 crore which would help it reduce its debt further.

Battling sector pressure ,Rcom shut down its wireless services last year and decided to concentrate only on enterprise and underground sea cable business.