The Hindu Business Line : BSNL plans 100-m line GSM tender

New Delhi, April 30 In a bid to ramp up its capacity, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd is floating new tenders seeking supply of GSM-based mobile equipment to support 100 million subscribers. The mega project is estimated to be worth $10 billion and will include supply of third generation mobile gear.

All the major equipment suppliers, including Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia Siemens, ZTE and Huawei, are expected to participate in the bidding process. The notice inviting tender will be released by BSNL within one week.

According to BSNL sources, the entire project was being divided into four parts — one each for the different zones in the country. Each zone will float its own tender for 25 million lines.

This is a move away from the previous project where only a single centralised tender was floated. BSNL sources said that the decision to divide the new project into 4 zones was taken to avoid controversies.

“BSNL’s contracts are huge for any vendor and they cannot afford not to be part of it. Dividing the new project into four zones could make sure that everyone gets a small part of it,” said an industry observer.

However, some vendors have expressed concern that BSNL may have to cough up a higher amount as the companies bidding for the contracts may form a cartel in such a way that they distribute the project among themselves.

Last year, BSNL had decided to go for centralised tendering to prevent such a cartel. But that led to other problems as a number of vendors could not get the contract. The delays caused have affected BSNL’s growth over the past year.

Sources said that BSNL is wary of yet another delay and is taking all measures to prevent the new project from going off track.

The company could also invite separate quotes for various parts of the network such as IT solutions, billing, customer relationship and other third party equipment. This would allow companies such as Sun Microsystems, HP, IBM, EMC, Wipro and TCS to directly negotiate their bids with BSNL rather than going through the primary network gear suppliers like Nokia Siemens or Ericsson. However, a final decision on this is yet to be taken.

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