The government has released draft tenders for inviting operators to set up passive cellular infrastructure in rural India with subsidy support from the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund. So far, DoT has shortlisted 21 companies, including RCL, Himachal Futuristic Communications Limited (HFCL), Ericsson, Quipo Telecom, GTL Infrastructure, ITI, Spanco Telesystems, Acme Telepower and RailTel, for the task. All these companies will go through a multi-layered bidding process for a prescribed maximum number of passive infrastructure sites.