Adani Data Network, a subsidiary of the Adani Group, has been granted a unified licence for access services by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), The Indian Express has learnt. The Gautam Adani-led company had entered the telecom sector after purchasing airwaves in the recent 5G spectrum auction.
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The company had acquired 400 MHz of spectrum in the 26 GHz band for a total of Rs 212 crore. While applying to participate in the auctions, Adani Data Network had said it had received a letter of intent from DoT for Unified Licence with authorisation for NLD/ILD/ISP-B in the Gujarat circle. These were different from the Unified Licence for Access Services that the company has received now.
In the spectrum auction, Reliance Jio had emerged as the top bidder, spending more than Rs 88,000 crore to acquire a total of 24.7 GHz of spectrum, followed by Bharti Airtel, which had acquired 19.8 GHz of spectrum. Vodafone Idea had bid for a total of 6,228 MHz of airwaves.
Even as the licence allows the Adani Group-company to offer full-fledged telecom services and internet facilities in the country, the company had earlier said that it was not bidding for spectrum for the consumer space, but to develop its own private network to deploy at its business verticals.
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Industry executives aware of these developments said that while the company can theoretically launch commercial services, practically, there were a number of hurdles the company will have to cross.
“Most corporations with countrywide presence have telecom networks that they use for in-house purposes such as having a dedicated line between their corporate headquarters and factories. Over the last few years, Adani Group’s footprint has spread across the country through its airports, ports, electricity transmission unit, etc and it makes sense that the company would want to get an access service licence that allows it to build a nationwide network on a single licence,” a top executive at a telecom infrastructure firm told The Indian Express.
Queries sent to the Adani Group and DoT remained unanswered until publication.
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In the last 4-5 years, Adani Group-owned infrastructure assets have mushroomed across the country including seven airports in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram; solar projects in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Odisha etc, electricity transmission and city-gas distribution projects in Gujarat, Haryana, and Maharashtra, among others.
