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Thomas K. Thomas

New Delhi , Feb. 10

BHARAT Sanchar Nigam Ltd has decided to award a Rs 200-crore contract to the US-based CSG Systems for deploying billing solutions for the state-owned company's nation-wide telecom services.

The two companies are in the process of signing a corporate licence agreement, which will allow BSNL to use CSG's billing platform for 10 years.

The deal has, however, taken a controversial turn with industry quarters pointing to the fact that the public sector company has given the contract to CSG without inviting competitive bids through a commercial tender.

While the CSG spokesperson refrained from making any comment, senior BSNL executives said that the deal had the approval of the board and the company could not go with the billing solutions offered by other companies owing to technical reasons.

"Billing is the heart of any service. We already had CSG's Kenan billing solutions for our existing network and it would have been difficult for us if we had procured any other billing platform. The standards are such that it does not allow interoperability," said Mr N.K. Mangla, Director, Marketing, BSNL.

Mr Mangla also pointed out that the decision to extend the relationship with CSG was taken in the interest of faster rollout of its mobile services. "We have tried and tested CSG solutions and have found it to be satisfactory," said Mr Mangla.

Industry sources, however, said that BSNL was violating the norms by not inviting competitive bids, which would have brought down the cost of the billing solution considerably.

As per the terms of the deal, BSNL would pay $27 million as licence fee over a 10-year period to CSG. That apart it will pay $18 million for annual maintenance and $6 million per annum as service charges for two years.

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BSNL to award billing order to CSG Systems

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