By IANS,
New Delhi : Real estate giant Unitech, which recently tied up with Norwegian telecom operator Telenor to launch mobile services in India, and Idea Cellular have been alloted 4.4 MHz of spectrum in the 1,800 MHz GSM band, the companies said Monday.
“The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has issued the letter to the company’s telecom subsidiaries for allotment of 4.4 MHz of spectrum in 1800 MHz GSM band in respect of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Kolkata service areas,” Unitech’s official statement said.
With this, the company has been allotted initial spectrum in 16 service areas out of total 22 service areas.
Idea Cellular said in a separate statement that it has been allotted spectrum in the same bandwidth in respect to Kolkata Metro Service Area.
Unitech Wireless, part of the Unitech group, is scheduled to start operations in the second quarter of 2009.
Reeling under liquidity crunch, the company earlier said it would mobilise up to Rs.2,500 crore (Rs.25 billion) through sale of some assets and equity to retire part of its Rs.8,000 crore (Rs.80 billion) debt by March 2009.
“We are working on many options to raise funds,” Unitech chairman Ramesh Chandra said, adding it could be through sale of some completed projects or offloading equity at project level to private equity funds.