RIL, Bharti, 3 others get ILD LoIs

new delhi: the government on wednesday announced that five private players have been allotted letters of intent (lois) for providing international long distance (ild) services after vsnl’s monopoly ends on april 1, 2002. lois were issued to reliance, bharti, data access, pacific net invest and connecting networks. the tatas, through the acquisition of 25 per cent in vsnl, already have a license to operate ild services.interestingly, data access and pacific net invest, the holding company of the former, both have received lois for offering the services. siddharth ray, md of data access, said that the company would surrender pacific’s licence as the company had a six-month time to convert the loi into a licence. the announcement was made by communications and information technology minister pramod mahajan at the inauguration of supercomm asia 2002. mahajan also said that the policy on introduction of internet telephony would be announced before the april 1 deadline. the trai has also recommended on wednesday that internet telephony be opened up from april 1. the government, he said, favoured unrestricted entry and unlimited competition in all areas of the telecom sector. mahajan said the government was also looking at offloading stakes in two other state-run telecom behemoths, mtnl and bsnl, in the near future. however, in another conference, shyamal ghosh, secretary, dot, said there was no specific proposal to divest its stake in mtnl and bsnl. “at the moment, there is nothing specific about mtnl and bsnl.� the government has a 56.25 per cent equity in mtnl. companies who have been allotted lois for ild would now have to pay a licence fee of rs 25 crore and a bank guarantee of rs 25 crore to sign the licence agreement with the government. the draft licence agreement had been earlier finalised as per trai recommendations along with two new conditions. these include that the bidder must have a rs 25 crore net- worth and it would not be mandatory for ild players to have interconnection with the domestic long distance players. mahajan said the government planned to increase the teledensity from the present 4 per hundred to over 10 per hundred by 2010. earlier, speaking at the supercomm inauguration, ghosh said the telecom sector was poised to grow at around 20-22 per cent and that mobile services would far exceed that growth rate.