In a bid to spread its telecom footprint across the country at a time when the government has decided to unify basic and cellular licences, Tata Teleservices has applied for licences in 7 more circles, including Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

The company has applied to Department of Telecom for licences in West Bengal (including Kolkata), Uttar Pradesh (East), Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Orissa, and Himachal Pradesh.

Tata Teleservices has also asked the Department of Telecom to issue letters of intent for licences in four circles of Haryana, Kerala, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh (West) for which the company had applied for a licence in September this year.

Upon acquiring basic licences in new circles, Tatas, which currently offer services in Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, would have presence in 17 circles, matching that of Reliance, and next only to that of state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.

"We welcome the decision of the Government to introduce single authorisation or registration for all telecom services with immediate unification of access licence - basic and cellular services - as a first step," Tatas said in the letter.

Tata Teleservices has offered to pay the differential entry fee of Rs 545 crore (Rs 5.45 billion) as determined by recommendation of telecom regulator TRAI, and has sought a unified access licence for its operations in the existing circles.

Pointing out at its earlier application for licences in four new circles, currently pending with the DoT, Tatas said, "We would request you to kindly issue the letter of intent for licences for these circles, so that we can pay the required fee and take effective steps to roll out our services immediately."

When contacted, DoT secretary Vinod Vaish declined to comment on the issue.

According to subscriber data released by Association of Basic Telecom Operators, last evening, Tata Teleservices' total subscriber base across the existing six circles stood at 11.95 lakh (1.195 million) as in October.

Of this, 4.35 lakh (435,000) subscribers belonged to WLL mobility services, 4.23 lakh (423,000) customers to WLL fixed services and the remainder were fixed line subscribers.

The government last week decided to unify the basic and cellular telecom licences, paving the way for conversion of WLL services of basic operators into fully mobile telecom services by payment of an additional entry fee, the benchmark for which is the fee paid by fourth cellular operator.