Sufia Tippu
Monday, 09 October 2006 15:33
IT Industry -
Market
Page 1 of 2
The world’s biggest ever GSM network tender, worth about $4 billion from Indian carrier Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL), is now underway, with three European vendors fighting for a piece of the action.
Announced early this year, the mega tender
for 60 million new GSM/UMTS lines has seen the field narrowed down to
just three contenders for a spot as one of the two suppliers.
Chinese major ZTE and US telecom giant Motorola have been disqualified from the
mega tender and the final bids have been narrowed down to European vendors Ericsson, Nokia and Siemens.
Motorola and ZTE were eliminated as they failed to meet the “stringent
technical criteria stipulated by the tender”. Sources said the
eliminations could be on security grounds, since ZTE is based in China,
and Motorola sources a huge chunk of equipment from Huawei, another
Chinese vendor.
BSNL had originally planned to issue the contract in two parts -- one
for 40 million lines, and another for 20 million in 2007, but later
decided to award the whole lot in one go. It also plans to set aside 25
to 30 percent of the lines for 3G.
The mega size of the deal had a number of telecom infrastructure
vendors positioning themselves to grab a piece of action. Alcatel
opened a second GSM base station production facility with its local
partner, ITI Ltd., Ericsson AB upgraded its base station facilities,
while Nokia also set up a manufacturing plant and was recently awarded
another GSM expansion deal from BSNL.
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