November 02, 2001

'24'

        Government have decided to award licenses for Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite (GMPCS) Service in India. These licences shall be issued on non-exclusive basis, as and when applied for, subject to clearance of specific proposal from security angle. The licence shall be issued for a period of 20 years, and further extendable by 10 years. The proposal for GMPCS licence is to be submitted in a prescribed application form. The detailed guidelines and application form is available from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) or can be downloaded from DoT Website www.dotindia.com.

        The applicant has to be an Indian company, registered under the Indian Companies Act’ 1956. Total foreign equity in the company shall not exceed 49% at any time during the entire licence period. Investment in the company by an NRI / OCB / International funding agencies will be counted towards its foreign equity. The applicant company and/or its promoters should have experience in telecom sector.

        Gateway Earth Station along with control and monitoring facility for all the licensed systems shall be located in India. From the security point of view, the operation and maintenance of the Gateways shall be with the Authority /Organization designated by the Government. GMPCS operators will provide monitoring facilities and security features as decided by security agencies.

        The licensee company will be required to pay one time Entry Fee of Rs. one crore prior to signing of the licence agreement. In addition to the Entry fee, the Licensee shall also pay License fee annually @ 10% of "Adjusted Gross Revenue" as Revenue Share generated from the Service.

        The licensee company shall be required to submit a Financial Bank Guarantee (FBG) of Rs. One Crore valid atleast for two years, prior to the signing of the licence agreement, from any scheduled bank in the prescribed Proforma given in the Licence Agreement.

        Network connectivity and interconnection between various networks shall be mutually negotiated and finalized between service providers subject to any regulation issued from time to time by TRAI under TRAI Act, 1997 as amended from time to time.

        DoT has already given Letter of Intent (LOI) in two cases to M/s. ASC Enterprises and M/s. Shyam ACeS (India) Pvt. Ltd. for grant of GMPCS licence in India.

        With GMPCS Service, a subscriber can communicate from any point on earth through hand-held terminal. The subscriber will have one telephone number irrespective of his location. The mobile satellite networks can operate with satellites either in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) upto 1000 KMs, Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) upto 10,000 KMs or Geo Stationery Earth Orbit (GEO) at 36,000 KMs. from the surface of the earth. Some of the Satellites for GMPCS are Global Star, Agrani, Garuda, ICO & Thuraya etc. These systems are designed to support variety of telecommunications services like voice, data, fax, messaging etc. having global reach with the help of a network of Gateway Earth Stations which provide connectivity towards satellite as well as PSTN. With GMPCS, easy, flexible and convenient communication is possible with more economical use of radio frequency spectrum.