305 applications

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has received a total of 305 applications from 21 companies during the last week of submission for approval. In the previous week, DoT received around 100 applications, taking the total number of requests for telecom licences to 401.

The DoT had fixed October 1 as the last date for accepting applications.

Among the companies that have applied for pan-India licences include Bycell Communications, Next Generation, Avnija Properties, AT&T, Sterlite Infrastructure (Sterlite Group), Videocon Group, Silicon Infosys, Satvik High-Tech Builders and Cellebrum Communications among others.

These companies were seeking to commence operations from all the 22 circles in the country, sources in the telecom ministry said.

While companies such as ECME Telepower applied for 12 circles, Meta Telecom (7 circles) and Spurt Industry (6 circles), some players opted for single circle operations.

The companies opting for single circle operations include Electro Therm India (Gujarat) and RSK Enterprise (Jammu & Kashmir).

The major companies such as BPL Mobile (22 circles), HFCL (21), Datacomp (22), Spice Communications (20) and the Anil Ambani group companies Swan Telecom (14) and Cheetah (2), and Parsvnath (22) had applied for licences during the prior week.

The telecom ministry is expected to begin scrutiny of the applications in the next couple of weeks. Sources also said the ministry has received assurances from the Ministry of Defence for vacation of spectrum by the end of this year.

The DoT, which is also the licensor of telecom services in the country, had sought release of 45 MHz spectrum from defence establishments. Even though, this is unlikely, some spectrum would be released during the next two-three month period.