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Our Bureau

Bidding to follow for USO project

A BSNL TOWER

New Delhi , Nov. 21

The Department of Telecom has shortlisted 21 companies for setting up passive cellular infrastructure in rural areas with support from the Universal Services Obligations (USO) Fund. The list of companies shortlisted include Ericsson, Quipo Telecom, GTL Infrastructure, ITI Ltd, Spanco Telesystems, TCIL, Acme Telepower, RailTel and TVS ICS.

Barring Reliance Communications and HFCL, all the others in the race are core infrastructure providers. Passive infrastructure in a mobile network essentially involves acquiring land, setting up towers and electrical and civil works that needs to be in place before operators can install the active infrastructure such as wireless radio equipment which brings mobile services to the consumers.

Invites EoIs

The DoT had invited expression of interest from telecom service providers and infrastructure providers to participate in the USO project. The short listed applicants will be invited to go through a multi-layered bidding for setting up a prescribed maximum number of passive infrastructure sites as decided based on the net worth of the applicant.

The successful bidder will have to install at least 30 per cent of the towers in the district within 4 months period, another 30 per cent within 8 months and the remaining 40 per cent within 12 months period of the signing of the agreement .

Installation

The winning companies will be given a one-year time period for installing the passive network in predetermined districts of the country. The sites where the towers will have to be set up and the number of towers for each district will be stipulated by the DoT. The project envisages a total of 10,000 towers in rural areas where there are no telephone services. In return, the DoT will give financial support from the USO fund over a five-year period.

DoT support

The DoT had earlier decided that support from USO for the rural mobile project would be given in two parts. Part A of the subsidy will be given to companies, which sets up the passive infrastructure. Infrastructure Provider (category1) licence holders and telecom operators, which have licence for a given area can bid for this part of the project. There are 115 IP (1) licence holders at present who primarily are involved in setting up infrastructure for service providers.

Part B of the subsidy from the USO fund will be given to the operators who offer the mobile services. Expression of interest for the second part will be invited by the DoT at a later date.

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Rural Development | Regulatory Bodies & Rulings

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