After an 18-month delay, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has finally issued an Internet Service Provider (ISP) license to Qualcomm, enabling the company to roll out BWA services (4G) in the country, reports Business Standard. Quoting a senior DoT official who confirmed the licence being issued to Qualcomm, the report said that the spectrum would be allotted to Qualcomm, as soon as the company applies for it. It also added that Qualcomm had confirmed receiving the license. In June 2010, Qualcomm had won BWA spectrum in Delhi, Mumbai, Kerala and Haryana for Rs. 4912.54 crore, with Mumbai being the costliest circle at Rs 2292.95 crore. The company had also brought in India-based Tulip Telecom and Global Holdings as its LTE rollout partners for $28 million and had received Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB)'s nod to invest up to Rs. 796.9 Crore in its Indian Broadband Wireless Access venture. Qualcomm had applied for an ISP license with four partner companies namely Wireless Broadband Business Services (Delhi), Wireless Broadband Business Services, Wireless Broadband Services (Kerala) and Wireless Broadband Business Services (Haryana). However,DoT had rejected Qualcomm’s ISP license bid in September 2011, stating that Qualcomm's application arrived in December, after the deadline for inviting the bids had expired and the company had nominated four different ISP companies instead of one, in order to get a Category A ISP license, which did not comply with the NIA rules mentioned in the letter of intent. Qualcomm had then claimed that the reasons for rejecting its application were baseless and that it had…
