Government-owned Power Grid Corporation which is mainly into power transmission business has received unified license to provide telecom services in the country. The firm has been granted the license with national long distance and Internet service provider authorization.
Until now, the state-run company provided its telecom towers and optical fibre cable infrastructure for Internet services to service providers and other firms for commercial use which is one of the sources of income for the company.
“The Department of Telecommunication has granted a unified licence to PowerGrid with national long distance (NLD) and Internet service provider-Category A service authorization for providing telecom services. The licence is valid for 20 years,” Power Grid Corporation said in a BSE filing today.
Previously, Power Grid had two separate licences which are: infrastructure provider-1 (IP-1) and national long distance-1 (NLD-1) which is going to expire in a few days. And now, the firm has received a single unified license.
According to PTI, an official related to the company said that “Power Grid has been in the business of telecom infrastructure for business to business services and the company has company has also built its optical fibre network through overhead cables using its huge network of power transmission infrastructure across the country.”
During December-April (2016-17), Power Grid has received an income of Rs. 371 crore from the telecom space, which is 29 percent higher from what they received a year ago.
Power Grid has operations all over the country with the transmission network covering roughly 134,018 circuit kilometres along with 214 extra high voltage power stations. Power Grid has a telecom company named Powertel that operates a network of 29,279 kilometres and points of presence in 210 locations across India.
