The government has issued letter of intent to Essar Spacetel Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Essar Teleholdings Ltd, for international long distance services.

The grant of letter of intent to Essar by the department of telecom comes at a time when the sector is headed towards a unified regime starting with unification of access (basic and cellular) services and subsequently moving onto a full unification encompassing all telecommunication services.

Sources in DoT told PTI that the company has been issued the LoI for ILD and given three months to complete the formalities relating to payments including fee and bank guarantee.

Essar Spacetel had submitted an application to the government for obtaining a licence for international long distance telephony in August this year.

Essar spokesperson could not be contacted for comments.

The company, at the time of submitting application for an ILD licence, had said it would mainly target international traffic originating from mobile subscribers.