ISLAMABAD, July 5: Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Monday scrapped four telecom companies from the list of potential investors, and approved the names of other 19 companies for the grant of Long Distance International (LDI) licences.

Of the four companies, M/s Century Telecom (Pvt) Ltd was disqualified on security reasons because the company had an Indian consultant on its panel of advisors while the other three companies M/s Indus Bell Technologies (Pvt) Ltd, M/s Orocom and M/s Telegreen (Pvt) Ltd had failed to qualify for the award of LDI licenses during a public hearing due to non-deposit of initial fees of $500,000.

The public hearing was organized by PTA as part of the Telecom Deregulation Policy to exchange views and comments with the prospective applicants, listen to their grievances and remove doubts and apprehensions about policy and procedure for the grant of LDI licences.

Twenty three companies had shown interest for the grant of LDI licences while 72 companies had applied for the Local Loop (LL) licences. The chairman, PTA, Shahzada Alam Malik later told reporters that M/s Century Telecom (Pvt) Ltd could not be included in the race for the grant of licenses because it was not given security clearance by the departments concerned.

Though he conceded that the company was of Pakistani origin, its consultant advisor was an Indian company called VSNL. Earlier, the chairman while speaking at the public hearing, announced that the auction for the allocation of frequency spectrum for the companies applying for LL licences and interested in Wireless Local Loop (WLL) services would be held between July 13 to 19.

The 19 companies, which qualified for the grant of LDI licenses are: M/s AG Telecom, M/s ARY Communication (PVT) LTD, M/s Bestel Communication (Pvt) Ltd, M/s Burraq Telecom, M/s Callmate Telips Telecom Ltd, M/s Circle Net Comm, M/s Dancom, M/s DV Com, M/s Link Direct International, M/s Micro Tech Links (Pvt) Ltd, M/s Redtone Telecommunication (Pvt) Ltd, M/s Spell Telecom, M/s Telecard, M/s Telecom Development (Pvt) Ltd, M/s Telenor, M/s Utel Pak Ltd, M/s Warid Telecom, M/S Wise Communication (Pvt) Ltd and M/s WorldCall Telecom.

The chairman said the authority had made all preparations to grant LDI licences to the parties concerned provided they fulfilled the condition of submitting Performance Bond of $10 million as laid down in the Information Memorandum.

The authority has asked the successful companies to submit $10 million within 30 days so that the process of issuing LDI licences could be expedited. Shahzada Alam Malik assured the investors that PTA would make optimum efforts to facilitate the operators and provide a level-playing field to all the stakeholders.

No discriminatory attitude would be adopted against any party besides anti competitive practices would also not be allowed in the telecom licences, he said. In view of vast potential available in the telecom market, he said, response for the local and foreign investors was very positive and encouraging, adding that licences for both LDI and LL were being given in an open and unrestricted regime in a fair and transparent manner.

The term of the licences would be for 20 years, he said. The participants, during the hearing, raised a number of questions about Reference Interconnect Officer (RIO), Co-location and interconnect arrangements while the company profile of each contestant was presented before the participants who were asked by the authority to offer their comments and views in a candid manner.

The chairman at the end said the induction of new parties in the Long Distance Telecommunication service would help in improving quality of service, reduction in telephone tariffs and bringing in heavy investment in the country.