Our Bureau

New Delhi, Jan 10

The Department of Telecom on Thursday issued letters of intent to nine different companies for foraying into telecom services. It has also given the go-ahead to Tata Teleservices to roll out pan-India GSM services along with their current CDMA operations in line with the policy to permit dual technology.

Of the nine which got LoIs, only two – Unitech and STel - are completely new to the telecom sector. Others are Tata Teleservices, Loop Telecom (owned by BPL), Spice Communication, Shyam Telelink, Swan Telecom, Datacom and Idea Cellular.

These companies either have telecom services operational in parts of the country or are backed by companies which already have a presence in the communications sector.

The DoT has asked all the companies to submit the entry fee to be eligible for a proper licence after which they will be allocated spectrum subject to availability.

Other applicants such as ByCell, Alliance, Cheetah, Parsvnath, Selene Infrastructure and HFCL did not make the cut. More than 46 companies had put in their applications to get telecom licences. The DoT has not processed any application that was submitted after September 25, 2007 which has put major companies out of the race which include the US major, AT&T, electronics giant, Videocon, and other large corporate entities such as Hindujas, Mr Sam Pitroda-supported Next Generation and Sterlite Infrastructure.

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