Reliance bids for telecom license in Pak

NEW DELHI: Indian telecom major Reliance Infocomm has bid for landline telephone operations in Pakistan. According to information available from Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the company, along with 72 other players has bid for the Local Loop (LL) operations.

According to information available from sources, Reliance is reported to be a frontrunner, and if selected, would be the first Indian company to enter Pakistan's deregulated telecom sector.

The licenses are being issued as part of Government's telecom deregulation policy announced in July last year to put an end to Pakistan Telecommunication Ltd's (PTCL's) monopoly on basic telephony. The PTA has also constituted a committee for scrutiny and short-listing of applications to evaluate the technical and financial viability of the applicants.





The Pakistan government has fixed a $500,000 fee and a performance guarantee of $10 million for long distance and international (LDI) telecom license and a $10,000 fee for LL fixed telecom line.

The new companies, which are required to become operational within 18 months of the issuance of license, are expected to bring investments of $1 billion in the next two to three years. The PTA also expects that this will help the country double its present tele-density of 2.8 percent of fixed line during the same period.

According to available information, the PTA has received 23 applications for LDI licenses and 72 for local loop LL. Out of 72 LL applications, 12 companies have applied to start operations in all the 14 telecom regions of the country. As per PTA, entry to both the LL and LDI markets would be unrestricted and that the authority would not limit number of companies interested to enter these markets. The PTA expects to start awarding licensing from the second week of July.

Meanwhile, while Reliance Infocomm corporate communications division denied the news, its representative Sanjay Kumar Jain whose name is listed as the contact person in the PTA site clarified that the company had just purchased the tender document but did not apply. This, however, seams unlikely because the PTA site clearly lists Reliance among the companies that have applied for the license. No further information was available from the company till the time of filing the report.

CyberMedia News