BSNL, on April 28, held discussions with 18 telecom and IT companies, which evinced interest in bidding for the tender, and the PSU on Tuesday submitted all clarifications sought by the equipment companies.
"Between today and opening of bids there would be only 5-6 working days. The time is too less to incorporate the changes and thus we have sought time from BSNL," one of the equipment supplier said.
When contacted, A K Sinha, BSNL chairman and MD said, "We have received requests from most of the vendors but no decision has yet been taken. We are looking into it."
Sources in the know, however, said that BSNL may consider vendors' request in view of the magnitude of the tender. On the type of queries from the vendors, Sinha declined to comment, saying the process was still on.
Eighteen leading telecom and IT companies including Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Cisco and HP have evinced interest in bidding for 45.5 million GSM lines to be added by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.
"Eighteen companies have bought the tender document. Virtually, all the big players are there like Siemens, Nortel, Nokia, Motorola, Huawei, Sun Micro Systems, HP and some other smaller companies," Sinha said.