Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) plans to roll out its 4G network in partnership with Ltd (HFCL), the group from which it acquired pan-India airwaves for high-speed internet and data services in May 2010.
According to people familiar with the development, Reliance-owned Infotel Broadband will focus on key aspects of the network and monitor the rollout, but will leave ground-level execution and management to HFCL, which has prior experience of similar deployment.
The staff being hired for setting up towers and laying optic fibre for RIL's 4G venture will be on HFCL's payrolls, said two persons who were interviewed for the project and given offer letters by HFCL. They were told the recruitment was part of an outsourcing contract. But HFCL Chairman Mahendra Nahata denied hiring people on RIL's behalf. "We are recruiting people, but that is for our own work, and these are people we have identified," he said. "We have been doing some tests and sample deployments for RIL, but there is no large contract yet," he added.
