By IANS,
New Delhi : With the state-run telecom operator, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), gearing up for third generation mobile services, six global network equipment makers have bid in a tender to supply 93 million GSM lines, a top company official said here Wednesday.
Chinese majors Huawei and ZTE are among the six contenders, the others being Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, Alcatel Lucent and Nortel, BSNL chairman and managing director Kuldeep Goyal said.
In a major deviation from its earlier policy, BSNL allowed those telecom vendors who do not have manufacturing facility in India to participate in its GSM tender.
This made Huawei, which merely has a research and development facility in Bangalore, eligible for bidding in one of the largest orders for GSM lines in the world, valued at around $9-10 billion.
The tender conditions say: “The eligible bidder company or its parent company shall be manufacturer of GSM EDGE Radio Access Network (GERAN). Such bidder company shall also be registered in India to carry out telecom related activity”.
When BSNL floated a tender for 23 million GSM lines last year, Huawei was disqualified as the norms then required bidders to have manufacturing facility in India.
BSNL officials said it would not be possible to declare the winners of the tender Wednesday, as for the first time, the telecom operator has divided the tender into four components – second generation (2G) lines, third generation (3G) lines, infrastructure, and operating and business support systems (OSS and BSS).
There is also a provision that companies can bid individually for any of the four components, or a single company can bid for all the components.
The bids will first be evaluated on technical parameters, and only those shortlisted will be passed on to the second round where the prices quoted by each firm will be compared.
Goyal said he expected the first orders for 33 million lines to be placed by the end of the year or in early 2009.
When asked if the winning bid would be below $100 a line, Goyal said: “Yes, that’s what we think.”
BSNL last year ordered around 13 million lines from Ericsson at about $91 a line, part of a tender for 23 million lines.