There was one exception: a little-known Internet service provider, Infotel Broadband Services Pvt. Ltd, with an annual turnover of just Rs 18,00,000 and one subscriber. Infotel was aggressively bidding across India. Its promoter Mahendra Nahata had in the past once defaulted on government licence fee in the telecom sector after making similarly high bids. But the officials seemed unconcerned. When the bidding ended, Infotel had agreed to pay a whopping Rs 12,847.77 crore for a national licence. That was 71,000 times the company’s annual turnover. Nobody questioned it – it was as if the
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