The department of telecommunications (DoT) has rejected HFCL Infotel’s application for unified access service licence (UASL) on the grounds that it does not meet networth criteria.

Under the UASL regime, every circle requires a specific net worth to be held by the applicant or parent company. The net worth is cumulatively calculated as pre-qualifying criteria before issuing LoIs, which leads to license fee payments and finally, the grant of a UAS licence. For pan-India licence a company should have a networth of Rs 1,350 crore.

IDBI owns more than 10% stake in HFCL Infotel. DoT has said that IDBI’s networth cannot be considered while calculating HFCL’s networth as IDBI is a bank. This has been conveyed to the officials of HFCL Infotel. Sources said that HFCL Infotel officials have not contested this.

Earlier, Parsvanath’s application for UASL was rejected by the DoT on the grounds that its memorandum of Association didn’t envisage telecom services as its objective at the time of filing of application. Parsavnath chairman Pradeep Jain, however, denied it. “This is wrong news,” said Jain.

Sources said that later the company changed its MOA and submitted relevant documents to the DoT. The department didn’t accept post application documents submitted by Parsvanath.

Other companies which have failed to qualify for licences are: Cheetah and ByCell. Cheetah was associated with Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group. ByCell, a Russian venture, has not yet got FIPB approval.

Spice Communications and Allianz Infratech may get licences for a few circles only as they do not meet networth criteria. For example Allianz may get licence for two category “c” circles or one category “B” circle.