The telecom ministry has approved new telecom licence for country’s only pan-India 4G spectrum holder Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited and issued letter of intent to the company for taking the licence.
“Telecom Minister (Kapil Sibal) has approved it (Unified Licence for RJIL) and letter of intent was issued last week,” official sources told PTI.
The company has now to submit one-time entry fee of about Rs 1,673 crore, a performance bank guarantee of Rs 220 crore and financial bank guarantee of Rs 44 crore for procuring the licence.
No immediate comments were received from the RJIL.
RJIL applied for Unified Licences on August 21 and stated its net worth at Rs 5,033.32 crore.
Under Unified Licence, Mukesh Ambani led RJIL will be allowed to provide services as full fledged mobile operator.
The new telecom licence will pave way for Mukesh Ambani’s second innings in the mobile telephony space after his first stint at Reliance Infocomm which is now known as Reliance Communications.
It was given away to his younger brother Anil Ambani led company after the two split a few years ago.
In 2003, Reliance Infocomm had flooded market with a low cost CDMA handsets bundled with a scheme that allowed consumers to make mobile phone calls at low rate of 10 paise for 15 seconds and STD calls for 40 paise a minute. The prevailing rate of STD calls at that time had ranged between Rs 2.40 to Rs 5.40 a minute.
RJIL is the only company that holds pan-India spectrum for 4G services. The company earlier held Internet Service Provider Licence which will be annulled once it is issued UL.
The company has shown intention to provide phone call service using airwaves it has and is testing the technology for the same.
