MTNL asks Govt to extend its mobile license till 2021

The state-run telecom major Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) has requested the Government to extend the validity of its mobile license till 2021 without extra cost in Delhi and Mumbai circles.

According to a report by PTI, MTNL Chairman PK Purwar has written a letter to Telecom Department in which he mentioned that an extension includes a late start of services owing to a litigation, and spectrum allotted nearly 2.5 years after the grant of license.

The cellular license of MTNL is valid till 2019 only.

Besides this, the company is also planning to repay its debt by monetizing its assets in Mumbai and Delhi.

Purwar recently told Gizbot, that "We have assets in the form buildings and lands which we are not using properly."

He said, "We want to monetize assets and for that, we have already submitted the proposal to telecom ministry three months back for consideration." Adding that MTNL had hired JLL as the consultant.

"We can raise Rs 4000 crore from those assets, he further added. The public sector utility has also planned to provide 8Mbps to its customers by bringing the small exchanges near their premises so that the customer loop length can be brought down less than to 1 Kilobits.

On expansion plans for this financial year, he said," broadband is one of the areas where we think we are strong and we can provide good services, a second is network expansion in a big manner and last is our enterprise segment."