DoT seeks details from Hutch on STD licence

The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) has sought certain clarifications from Hutchison Essar, including details of the equity structure, while processing its application for an STD licence.

Hutchison Essar group has consolidated its mobile interests in India under a single entity Hutchison Max Telecom Ltd earlier this year.

Hutchison Essar is currently the third largest GSM operator in the country with a presence in 13 telecom circles and a subscriber base of over 8.8 million. In a bid to enter the Rs 10,000 crore national long distance (NLD) services, the company had applied before DoT.

The company currently routes its STD calls through other operators incurring carriage charges and access deficit charge too in case of BSNL. Top mobile operators such as Bharti, Reliance, BSNL and Tata Teleservices have their own STD network. While confirming that the company had received queries from DoT on some issues, its executives said that these involved "minor and trivial" issues and added that Hutchison Essar would reply to the department within the stipulated time.

Its executives added that the company was serious on entering the NLD market. The NLD licence will cost Hutchison Essar Rs 100 crore as entry fee, performance guarantees of Rs 200 crore and an additional Rs 20 crore for bank guarantees.