DoT may issue letters for licences this week

The Department of Telecom (DoT) is on the verge of issuing letters of intent (LoI) for mobile licences to applicants shortly, possibly within this week.

The development comes even as the department, in a fresh affidavit filed before the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) today, reiterated its position on how spectrum will be distributed.

The companies that are expected to be issued the LoIs (formal offer from the government asking the applicants to complete the formalities for getting licence) include Spice Communications, Idea Cellular, Unitech, Swan Telecom, Cheetah Corporate Services, Parsvnath Developers Ltd and ByCell Telecom.

The companies which accept the LoIs will get a fortnight to pay the licence fee (an estimated Rs 1,600 crore for a nationwide licence) and join the queue for spectrum.

The norms were recently amended to delink the award of spectrum from the licence and it is expected that the new applicants will get spectrum after the defence ministry releases it, perhaps early next year.

The DoT expects to get over Rs 10,000 crore as non-refundable fee from the applicants.

According to Telecom Minister A Raja's recent letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the 46 firms that have applied for spectrum are to be divided into two groups. The first includes those which applied before September 25, and will get the first priority.

The DoT affidavit divides the telecom firms into four groups "� the first has the existing firms who will be eligible to get spectrum as their subscriber numbers rise, the second has firms that have got licences but not spectrum, and the third has firms like Reliance Communications which have applied for GSM spectrum.

The affidavit says if there is any spectrum left after meeting the requirements of these three, it will be allotted to new applicants. The affidavit follows the TDSAT's direction to the government yesterday asking it to file an affidavit on the spectrum allocation procedure.