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RailTel Corporation of India is set to bag two projects worth Rs 400 crore for laying optical fibre cable network in North East part of the country.
The project, financed by the Universal Services Obligation fund, envisages laying and managing optical cables in rural areas across six States. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd had also bid for the project but lost out to the lower quotes submitted by RailTel.
Two phases
The project has been divided into two phases. In the first phase, the cable network is to be laid in Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura. Against a benchmark cost of Rs 89.93 crore, RailTel put in a bid of Rs 89.50 crore. In comparison, BSNL had quoted Rs 170 crore. BSNL's bid was disqualified since it had quoted higher than the benchmark amount set by the USO administrator.
In the second part of the project, the cable network is to be rolled out in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland. For this, RailTel had quoted Rs 298.50 crore and BSNL had offered to do the project for Rs 315 crore. The USO had set Rs 315.79 crore as the benchmark amount.
The contracts are likely to be awarded to RailTel since it has emerged the lowest bidder in both projects, according to top sources in the Department of Telecom. They added some concerns were raised on the lack of competition in the bidding process because only two companies had bid for the project. But they said that the probability of going for a re-bid is highly remote, since the USO administrator had given wide publicity to the tender.
Major contract
This will be the first major contract that will be bagged by RailTel funded by the USO. RailTel, formed in September 2000, is a public sector unit under the Ministry of Railways. The corporation aims to create a nationwide broadband telecom and multimedia network in all parts of the country. From an initial OFC network of less than 5000 km transferred to it in 2000-01, RailTel has since expanded the network to over 34000 km as on 2008-09.
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