State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) will short-list bidders for the submarine cable project.

The Department of Telecommunications (by Telecom Commission) will take a final call in selecting a company. The total cost of the Chennai-Andaman submarine cable will be around ₹1,132 crore — ₹800 crore for laying the cable and ₹332 crore for maintenance and managing the project for next five years from the day of operation.

The project was supposed to be operational by December 2018, but looking at the pace, it may be delayed by around six months. It is being funded by Department of Telecom and Universal Service Obligation Fund, in which BSNL is the executing company and Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd is the consulting agency.

According to the BSNL’s tender, the bidder shall be a company with a total turnover of ₹1,400 crore or $200 million cumulatively during the last three financial years (2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17). “In the case of an Indian subsidiary, the turnover of parent company shall also be taken into consideration for determining the fulfilment of this condition. Annual report/audited balance sheets shall be submitted along with the bid as supporting document,” it said.

The bidder company or its parent or holding company of the parent shall have successfully executed minimum of two global repeatered submarine cable system projects during the last 10 years, as on the date of bid submission, each of which should be of at least 1,000 km of submarine cable system, out of which at least one should be with deployment depth of minimum 3,500 metres, it added.

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