GRAPEVINE: Another Big Battle?

Haryana

is a high-demand state to day. Piggybacking on the national

capital Delhi that it surrounds, it has developed quite fast,

especially since 1994. Gurgaon best mirrors the future of the

state. It is probably the best-planned city in the county today.

Corporates are shifting their base here and property prices

shooting up every day. That certainly makes it attractive.

But what is more

interesting is that two titans of the Indian telecom industry–one

reigning and one emerging–have their eyes firmly set on the

state. Of course, they are Sunil B Mittal of the Bharti group

and Mahendra Nahata of HFCL.

The market grapevine is

that if it is bid again, Bharti will try its best to grab the

circle. The company, according to industry sources, has already

studied the state’s demography thoroughly, and has even

prepared the complete network plan. Many go to the extent of

saying that it has even started talking to property owners for

its central offices and transmission equipment. Anyway, it has

the reach of its cellular network in places like Gurgaon,

Faridabad, and Ballabhgarh. It can, say sources, start the

service in six months flat if it gets the licence–at least in

some parts. That is if the circle is bid for again.

And that is the big

question. At the time of writing, it is still unknown whether

the state is available for bidding again or not. It may be

mentioned here that the licences for Delhi, Haryana, UP (west),

and Orissa were retained by HFCL, after the then communications

minister, Sukh Ram, put a cap on the number of licences. The

move was seen by many as designed to help HFCL to get out of the

crisis of going for nine circles, for which it was the highest

bidder. But the prolonged court cases between DoT and HFCL, and

the latter’s win, meant that HFCL was to get out. Things have

changed dramatically since then. The licence fee regime has been

replaced by revenue sharing. Today, it is an attractive

proposition.

The rumour is that HFCL

now wants to retain this state. Some time back, HFCL was keen on

retaining just one state–Haryana–and getting out of the rest

three through an out-of-court settlement. HFCL’s turnkey

division had worked out a detailed SDH-based network plan for

the entire state. For some time, it was in cold storage. Now,

with the company thriving with share prices going up and money

put up by Kerry Pecker, the company is all set to go for the

plan again, feel observers. Market rumours are even wilder with

talks of a possible alliance of HFCL and Reliance. HFCL also has

Punjab and that makes the proposition even more attractive if it

can get Delhi and UP (West) as well. That will make the company

cover most of north India.

It remains to be seen, who

gets the prized state of Haryana. But before that we are going

to see some hot contest.