A top official in BPL Telecom Business group said the company had not yet received the green signal from DoT, though it had applied for an A category ISP licence which would enable the group to cover the entire country.

It is believed that the delay in allowing the BPL group to make a foray into the ISP sector is one of the actions by the DoT to put pressure on the group to pay up the cellular outstanding licence fee. However, BPL Mobile, the cellular service operator in Mumbai, paid Rs 5.70 crore as 20 per cent of the outstanding licence fee on February 14.

The company officials, however, declined to comment on the issue, saying: "DoT has, in principal, agreed to our proposal and we are very much in the fray and expecting the licence any day fromnow and the group is planning to set up an Internet gateway in Mumbai with a cost of Rs 15 crore," the BPL official said.

Moreover, the group is gearing up for the foray and has even restructured the portfolio of some senior executives. For instance, Shiv Raichand, who was earlier handling the BPL ISP business plans, has been shifted to the Y2K business and connectivity division as the group head (operations).

In yet another move, Virendra Singh Rawath, who will now look after the group ISP foray, has been appointed as the associate vice president (engineering and operations).

As part of the plans, the BPL group is also launching it Internet set-up box which will convert the television to enable web browsing chat, e-mail and entertainment. The new device from the group's stable connects with 56 kbps high speed modem and is also upgradeable to cable modem connectivity.

BPL is also launching its multimedia PC-TV enabling the customer to browse the web, send and receive faxes, watch programmes. Thecompany's PC-TV features 70 cms Blackline S Picture tube, 200 MHz Pentium MMX Processor with 16 MB RAM and 2.1 GB HDD, DVD-ROM Drive, built-in modem for fax and Internet applications.

According to a DoT source, so far the department has not initiated any action against the companies which have defaulted on payment of outstanding licence fee on the expiry date of February 28 deadline.

"But the March 31 deadline may see some actions against the defaulters," he added.