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Fiscal 2003–04 saw Reliance unfold the first chapter of its telecom services saga, with the initial rollout and consolidation of its CDMA services. Reliance Infocomm, the flagship company of the group, became a force to reckon with in little time.

Reliance Infocomm is already an all-India service provider, as far as licenses are concerned. Under UALR, the company has already acquired licenses for 20 circles, out of the total of 23. In addition, it also has the letter of intent for J&K. The company had 6.46 million CDMA mobile subscribers at the end of March 2004. And, Reliance Telecom had 0.79 million GSM subscribers. Together, the group had 7.25 million mobile service subscribers, earning the country´s largest mobile service subscriber base.

However, the group didn't seem to pay much attention on the GSM business during the fiscal, with the subscriber base registering a mere 46 percent growth as against an industry average of 135 percent. And, as ARPUs in the GSM space declined steeply, the revenues here took a beating.

Reliance Infocomm has a network presence in 1,100 cities through PoPs in 673 cities. The company is targeting 3,800 more cities in the next leg of expansion, which is expected to be over in the coming 15–18 months.

In the second phase of its expansion, Reliance will focus on broadband by providing 100 Mbps Ethernet links to corporates. The service is likely to be rolled out in 30 towns to begin with, and then to 200 towns, in a step-by-step manner.

The services portfolio will include fixed lines, leased lines, international private leased circuits, virtual private networks, video phones, and audio and video conferencing solutions. Reliance has already put in place 60,000 Rkm of optical fiber cable infrastructure across the country to support its fixed-line offerings.

Reliance is seriously looking at enhancing its data services portfolio, In October 2003 it launched the Mobile Application Contest 2003, under the Dhirubhai Ambani Developer Programme (DADP), in association with Nasscom. It was aimed at selecting the best mobile applications, for possible deployments. As part of the prizes, cash awards of over Rs 1.3 million were offered. The DADP program has more than 11,000 individual developers and 800 independent software vendors (ISVs) associated with it.

The Netway initiative, which Reliance talked about earlier, is also likely to see light of the day in its second phase of expansion. Netway will be targeted at home users and will enable Reliance to enter the entertainment (read convergence) space.

In the fiscal gone by, Reliance took a plunge in the carrier-of-carriers business. In January 2004, Reliance Gateway Net (a subsidiary of Reliance Infocomm) acquired 100 percent of the undersea cable company Flag Telecom for $211 million. This acquisition gave Reliance an international gateway to global markets and an international undersea cable network with a global footprint. Flag is said to connect 16 of the world's top 20 business centers and 75 percent of the world's population through its 55,000 Rkm of fiber optic network. Post the acquisition, FLAG announced plans to build a new cable system with multiple landings in the high-traffic Gulf region.

FLAG Telecom had reported revenues of $92.8 million for the first nine month of the financial year and after the acquisition has not released any figure.

The group has put in place a high-capacity, integrated digital infrastructure, to offer a slew of voice, data, and video services over wired as well as wireline networks. With convergence as the underlying strategy, the group is all poised to play a dominant role on the Indian telecom scene in the coming years.