Government ready to accept Qualcomm offer for Tulip’s dues
24 Feb 2012
The government today said it was ready to accept US chipmaker Qualcomm's offer for the clearance of Rs410-crore dues of its Indian partner Tulip Telecom so that the company got a licence for wireless broadband services.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) today informed TDSAT, the telecom tribunal, that Qualcomm's offer was acceptable to it with some minor modifications.
The tribunal told Qualcomm to deposit the money with DoT, which would issue licence within a week to the US-based firm.
However, as regards spectrum, the tribunal without any assurances to Qualcomm, said that DoT would not "adopt any adversarial approach" while deciding on grant of spectrum.
The justice S B Sinha-led TDSAT bench, further asked DoT to dispose the application of Qualcomm for BWA spectrum expeditiously.
Qualcomm has moved an application before the TDSAT for provision of bank guarantee of the disputed amount claimed by the DoT from its partner.
Tulip is a 13 per cent shareholder in the consortium that had bid for broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum along with Qualcomm.
The rules require operators to produce a no-dues certificate from DoT for obtaining the licences.