Telecom sources said the deal has been structured through a complex route of debt financing in ETL. Technically, the 76 per cent equity of ETL cannot be transferred since the proposal to float the company (ETL) has not been cleared so far, a source said.
Essar officials claimed the group had not paid any premium for the transfer of stake in ETL. We have picked up the liability of the first years licence fee (Rs 115 crore) and the bank guarantees, an Essar official said. Essar Cellphone already has cellular licences in Delhi, Haryana, UP (East) and Rajasthan.
JT Mobile had floated Ever- growth Telecom as a separate company to implement network rollout in Punjab.
One of the consortium partners in JT Mobile, Parasrampuria Sugar and Chemi-cals Ltd, has challenged the transfer of its 20 per cent equity to R Kataria in a Delhi court.
Sources said the Essar group and JT Mobile signed an agreement a few weeks back. Essar Telecom officials confirmed that the company was negotiating with ETL to have it use the Essar Cellphone brandname in Punjab.
Essar Commvision, a 90:10 joint venture between the Essar group and Nynex, already holds the basic telecom services licence for Punjab. The synergy driving the Essar acquisition of ETL, according to sources, is the 15-20 per cent project cost reduction that comes with using a common radio backbone to carry traffic, same buildings and towers and other savings in soft costs like marketing, advertising and administration.
In the meanwhile, ETL has placed orders with Nokia and Motorola for supply of equipment. The contract, estimated to be around $35 million (some Rs 120 crore), was signed yesterday. Under the three-year contract, Nokia will supply the mobile swit-ching centre with a 50,000-line capa-city. Motorola will set up the base stations and de-sign the radio network, sources said. They were unwilling to give a break-up of the contract.
