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Thomas K Thomas

New Delhi, Sept. 10 Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd’s project for setting up mobile network for 93 million subscribers across the country, the world’s largest, has received bids from 6 vendors - Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, Alcatel Lucent, ZTE, Huawei and Nortel.

US major Motorola did not submit its bid despite having gone to the court for being disqualified from bidding for the previous contract in 2006.

The move from Motorola could be indicative of the company’s future strategy of not going after the GSM equipment market and instead focus on new technologies such as WiMax.

BSNL will award the contract to the lowest bidder in each zone in the country. The financial bids will be opened after a committee evaluates the technical aspects submitted by the vendors.

The total cost of the project is estimated at around $10 billion.

BSNL had divided the project into four parts. Part 1 includes setting up network for GSM based 2G mobile services.

For this, South zone received bids from Huawei, ZTE and Nortel. Ericsson, Nokia Siemens (NSN) and ZTE bid for the North zone. Alcatel Lucent and NSN bid for West and for the East zone, the battle is on between Ericsson and Huawei.

The second part involves rolling out third generation (3G) network. For this Huawei, ZTE and NSN are vying with each other in the South zone. Ericsson is battling with ZTE in the North. Huawei, ZTE and Ericsson have put in their bids for the East and for the West, it’s a four-way fight between ZTE, Huawei, Alcatel Lucent and NSN.

While Ericsson and NSN have bid for areas where they already have set up infrastructure either for BSNL or other operators, Chinese vendor ZTE is the only company which has put in its bid for all zones in both categories.

The third segment will be awarded to companies which can set up the passive infrastructure including towers, power generation rooms and other basic equipment required for a cell site.

BSNL has received bids from a number of players including GTL Infra, KEC, Quippo and Acme.

The fourth part is related to software and billing for which the bidding will take place by the end of the month.

Almost all BSNL’s mobile contracts have run into rough weather previously. Some of the vendors said that the latest contract may also get controversial once the financial bids are opened.

They said that BSNL had diluted the eligibility norms allowing vendors with no manufacturing facility in India to bid for the project.

In the earlier contract, BSNL had made it mandatory for the vendors to have local manufacturing, which had kept out the Chinese companies from the bidding process.

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