The ₹26,821-crore 4G equipment of Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL), which has been cleared by the PSU’s board of directors, will now be placed before the Group of Ministers (GoM) for a final approval.

Sources close to the development told businessline that the Tata Consultancy Services, Tejas Networks and Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) consortium has been chosen for the project, which has been in the works for the last two years.

“It is now understood that BSNL’s Tender Committee/ Management Committee have recommended the techno-commercial aspects for approval and, therefore, BSNL may go ahead with the tender process and submit a detailed note for seeking the approval of GoM on the process of procurement followed,” a source privy to the development said.

The project involved installing of one-lakh towers for BSNL-MTNL 4G network, maintenance and services for nine years.

The BSNL Board in its meeting held on December 21, 2020 and the management committee in its meeting held on December 31, 2020 had approved the ‘expression of interest for registration-cum-participation and proof of concept (PoC) for BSNL’s 4G tender.

Then the TCS consortium emerged as the single successful vendor. Since then only lab tests have been going on, but no field trials as per sources.

Apart from TCS, other vendors such as Tech Mahindra, L&T and HFCL also showed interest in the project but failed to submit the PoC and were dropped out of the process in January this year.

Revival plans

The government has been working on revival plans for the State-owned telecom operator, at least for the last eight years, and in July this year, the Cabinet also approved ₹1.64-lakh crore as a revival package for BSNL.

The financial support for capex were given to promote indigenous technology development and BSNL is in process of deploying ‘Aatmanirbhar) 4G technology stack.

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