Sterlite and AT&T Join Telecom Race in India
The telecom department has so far received more than 400 applications.
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In a major rush to meet the 5 pm deadline set by the Department o= f Telecommunications (DoT) today, over a dozen companies applied for unifie= d access service licence (UASL), mostly for pan-India services, in 22 circl= es.=20
Today’s applicants include a wide range of companies =97 from= US telecom giant AT&T to real estate majors, CD maker Moser Baer, opti= c fibre to aluminum major Sterlite Industries promoted by Anil Aggarwal, Pr= amod Mittal-promoted steel giant Ispat Industries, and the Hindujas.=20
With this, DoT has now received over 400 applications for tel= ecom licences, from just 74 five months ago.
AT&T has tie= d up with Mahindra & Mahindra group company Mahindra Telecommunications= Pvt Ltd and applied for a pan-India licence.=20
AT&T will have a 74 per cent stake while the rest will be= with the Mahindras. This marks the start of AT&T’s second stint in the= wireless space in India after it pulled out of Idea Cellular in 2002.
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AT&T is the second foreign company to apply for a pan-India licence= after Russian conglomerate Sistema, which bought over Shyam Telelink (whic= h operates telecom services in Rajasthan), and put in an application also t= oday.=20
Among the real estate applicants today are Delhi-based Omaxe = group as well as BPTP and Aunita Properties.
Several lesser-k= nown companies such as IT solutions firms Tulip, Meta Telecom, Prithvi Info= rmation Solutions Ltd, Next Generation have also applied amongst others.=20
Even ByCell, which had applied earlier for UASL licence in on= ly five circles, extended its application for a pan-Indian licence.
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DoT had fixed October 1 as the deadline for new applications for UAS= L licence.=20
Sources say scrutinising the applications could take two to t= hree weeks, after which DoT will issue letters of intent to eligible player= s with a condition that they pay the licence fee (around Rs 1,500 crore for= a pan-Indian one) within a week. Granting spectrum, however, will be dealt= separately based on its availability.=20
The government is negotiating with the ministry of defence to= vacate spectrum and hopes to get around about 25 MHz for current mobile se= rvice technology (known as second-generation of 2G services).
Apart from the new applicants there are over half-a-dozen companies that h= ave already applied for UASL, which permits operators to offer both GSM and= CDMA technology services.=20
These include Mahendra Nahata-promoted HFCL, Reliance Dhirubh= ai Ambani group-backed Swan and Cheetah Telecom, real estate developers DLF= and Parasvnath, Idea Cellular (which has applied for nine circles) and Spi= ce Telecom (which has applied for 20 circles).=20
The rush, experts say, is because the telecom market is expec= ted to see big growth and is likely to hit over 500 million subscribers by = 2010 and provide a major upside to investors.
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The telecom department has so far received more than 400 applications
This will be AT&T's second stint in the wireless space in India =
Sources say scrutinising the applications could take 2-3 weeks
