DoT offers LoI to five new players

New Delhi, Jan 10 (UNI) The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) today cleared maiden entrants Unitech, Shipping Stop and Datacom for offering pan-Indian telecom services.

The number of the new players, who have received the Letters of Intent (LoI) is believed to be five in number.

Sources said that Spice Tele got the LoI for operations in four circles, while Bycell, Allianz Infra, HFCL failed to bag LOIs.

The LoIs will be converted to pan-India licence on payment of Rs 1,650 crore. Priority in spectrum allotment will be determined by conversion of LOIs.

The move was capped with Telecom Minister A Raja signing an in-principle order for GSM spectrum allotment to Reliance Commmunication (RComm).

Mr Raja said this said that this allotment is critical for RComm as it can not go ahead an place orders for GSM spectrum equipment and put their backend in place.

The allotment of spectrum for Reliance Communications is important because they can now go ahead and place orders for GSM spectrum equipments and put their backend in place. This would also mean that once defence vacates spectrum, Reliance can roll out its GSM services.

Additional GSM spectrum allotment has also been given in-priciple to Bharti Airtel and Vodafone but the order has not been issued yet as the secretary and the member (technology) approval is also required.

UNI RT SBA RAI2208