MTNL pursues ILD licence

The telecom operator has invited bids for its global tender for ILD traffic interception

"We will soon approach the department of telecom for an international long distance (ILD) licence... (and) discuss whether we need to apply again as we already had a letter of intent (LoI) for the earlier ILD licence which expired in 2004," MTNL officials said.

MTNL was issued an LoI for an ILD licence in 2004. It expired because the PSU did not convert it into a licence, as it was still being undecided about starting a service.

At present, MTNL routes all its outgoing ISD calls through private operators, mainly VSNL. The state-owned telecom operator has also invited bids for its global tender for ILD traffic interception and monitoring systems in Delhi and Mumbai.

The PSU has proposed setting up these systems at the switching facilities in the two metros.

The system fulfills the pre-licence conditions for ILD issued by the government. These have to do with the requirements of law enforcement agencies for call interception and monitoring.

The ILD segment is expected to see intense competition if MTNL enters the field which is currently dominated by VSNL, Reliance and Bharti. ILD telecom service is already a highly price-sensitive and commoditised market.

Recently, the licence fee for ILD was reduced to Rs 2.5 crore which makes it cheaper for MTNL to go for it now than in 2004, when it would have had to cough up nearly Rs 100 crore to convert the LoI into a licence.

MTNL's preparation for its own ILD service started sometime ago when it formed a joint venture with BSNL for entering the segment, to excecute a Rs 2,000-crore project for a submarine cable, linking Mumbai-Gulf-Europe and the East coast, Singapore and countries beyond.