The US-based telecom major JMS along with Telecommunications Consultant India Ltd (TCIL) has approached IOC for taking over the oil company's over 6,200 km long OFC line to provide internet services, IOC officials said.

To begin with, the corporation is planning to float a separate joint venture company with JMS-TCIL combine for the 520 km Haldia-Barauni pipeline, the officials said. When contacted IOC director (pipelines) S N Jha confirmed the move and said "we are in talks with TCIL-JMS combine for setting up a 50:50 joint venture company. The combine has asked IOC to provide communication channel for internet services."

In case the corporation goes ahead with a joint venture company with TCIL and JMS for the 520 km long Haldia-Barauni OFC, the estimated investment in the jointventure would not be more than Rs 200 crore, officials said.

Since IOC has already been conferred the navratna status, there would be no need to get clearance from the government as the estimated investment falls within the Rs 600 crore limit.

IOC officials, however, made it clear that the corporation would not be directly involved in providing services and would only lease their lines while keeping the option of using the OFC lines for their own internal operations.

The corporation is also planning to expand the capacity of the 1444 km long Kandla-Bhatinda pipeline and with this the capacity of OFC lines would also go up, the sources said. IOC uses two types of bandwidths for its internal communication network--microwave and ultra high frequency (UHF). A major portion of the network uses UHF bandwidth.

The corporation will also be laying OFC lines along its proposed Vadinar-Kandla and Chennai-Trichy-Madurai pipelines, the sources said.

IOC would be the third such public sector undertaking after therailways and Powergrid Corporation to lease their communication network for telecom companies.

Powergrid Corporation has already announced its foray into telecom sector by entering into a memorandum of understanding with Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) to lease its optical fibre network to the telecom company for providing services.