DoT set to grant telecom licences soon

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By Sandeep Gurumurthy, CNBC-TV18

The Department of Telecom will grant letters of intent to applicants for a telecom licence over the next couple of days. Applications of all those companies who had evinced interest before September 25 are being processed first, reports CNBC-TV18.

The DoT has clarified that the qualifying criteria should be met as on date of application. That rider could potentially rule out 4 to 5 of the 19 companies that are in the fray for a telecom license in the first round.

Meanwhile, the process of allocating additional spectrum to existing GSM players as per TRAI criteria and startup spectrum to cross over applicants like Rel Comm has already begun.

The Telecom Department is likely to issue letters of intents to new applicants.

 

Reliance Communications is likely to get an in-principle order for crossover allotment of GSM spectrum. That is very crucial because while the government may have given the go-ahead for the GSM foray, it still needs to allot GSM spectrum.

 

It is a commitment from the government that Reliance will get GSM spectrum and that paves the way for RCom to go ahead and order the GSM equipment and put in place the infrastructure, so that when defense vacates the GSM spectrum, Reliance can go ahead and rollout GSM services.

 

That is a very crucial trigger Reliance Communications that we are expecting later today or early tomorrow. As far as LoIs are concerned, it is understood that it is likely to be issued to applications, who had applied before September 25.

 

Not all of them are going to get it. Only 19 of them are in the fray and it is learnt that 5-6 of them may miss out, because they may have not met the qualifying criteria.

 

There is a DoT note that has been doing the rounds since last afternoon, which is being widely circulated by an operator. That seems to indicate that 4 or 5 companies that are missing out are Parsvnath , Unitech and Spice . Of course, there is no independent confirmation from DoT.