The Hindu Business Line : BSNL awards 11-m lines contract to Nortel, Nokia

BHARAT Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has awarded the world's largest contract for supply of 11 million cellular lines to Nortel and Nokia. The contract, worth $860 million, envisages supply of Global System for Mobile (GSM) based mobile network across the country over the next one year.

While Canada-based Nortel will supply 7 million lines for the South and eastern parts of the country, Finnish technology major Nokia will roll out 4 million cellular lines in the North for the state-owned company. Though Nortel had emerged as the lowest bidder for all the three regions, as per the terms of the BSNL contract no single company could bag the contract for all the sectors. The contract for the western region has already been awarded to the joint venture between French major Alcatel and ITI for 1 million lines.

Other technology providers, including Motorola, Ericsson and Huawei were also in the fray to get a pie of the deal. This will be the first major deal for Nokia and Nortel in India's booming cellular market.

BSNL has over 5 million cellular subscribers. Though it is adding more than 3 lakh subscribers every month, its growth is stagnating owing to lack of capacity. The contract with Nokia and Nortel will enable BSNL to achieve its target of 25 million subscribers by December 2005.