The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) issued the licence for providing international long distance (ILD) services to Bharti Telesonic on 13 March 2002. The ILD sector is being opened up for competition from 1 April 2002.

Bharti has become the second company, after Reliance Communications, to get ILD licence. Other companies, viz. Data Access, Connecting Networks and Pacific Net Invest have been issued letters of intent for the same.

In order to secure the licence, the company has deposited with DoT, a one-time non-refundable entry fee of Rs.25 crore in addition to an unconditional bank guarantee of Rs.25 crore, which would be released on fulfilment of its rollout obligations.

Bharti plans to launch its ILD services in April 2002 under the brand name IndiaOne, under which it launched its national long-distance services on 26 January 2002. In fact, the company has already installed, commissioned and tested two international gateways in Chennai and Mumbai and entered into bilateral agreements with a number of international carriers to put in place the network backbone for its ILD services.