State-owned power company PowerGrid Corporation Limited has been awarded the national long distance (NLD) license by the department of telecom for its proposed foray into the telecom business.
An agreement to this effect was signed between PGCIL and DoT officials in New Delhi on Thursday. "In the post NLD period, the company is eyeing more options and opportunities in terms of customer segments, increase in customer base and providing value-added services to the customers directly," PGCIL said in a statement. PGCIL has immediate plans to provide services to various corporate and government agencies after the NLD license.
The license would also enable PGCIL to address the bandwidth requirement of those corporate customers who could not be served under the present IP-II, IP-I and ISP licenses. The new license is envisaged to result in increased utilisation of PowerGrid's telecom network.
Further, business avenues would be widened as the license would allow accessing directly and providing connectivity to the corporate sector, banks, financial institutions, educational and research institutions, defence services such as the army, the navy, the air force and various central and state government departments for e-governance and state-wide area network applications.
PowerGrid is also contemplating utilisation of its existing bandwidth for services to hospitals for tele-medicine and entertainment industry, the company said.
