Expansion: BSNL talks to vendors

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited said on Friday it was negotiating hard with telecom equipment suppliers Ericsson and Huawei for its Rs 32,000-crore (Rs 320-billion) project to expand GSM network by 93 million lines, but has kept open the option for re-inviting bids if the talks lead nowhere.

"We are negotiating with the vendors on a fast track (and) hope to finalise it within a week or two," BSNL CMD Kuldeep Goyal told PTI.

Asked whether the PSU was looking for retendering the 93 million GSM lines-expansion order, Goyal said: "That option weare keeping open. If we are able to get reasonable price from the present vendors then we may not retender."

BSNL had chosen the bids submitted by Ericsson and Huawei, while rejecting the offers made by three other vendors -- Nokia Siemens, ZTE and Alcatel Lucent. BSNL is yet to place the Advanced Purchase Orders.

Nokia-Siemens had challenged the rejection by BSNL and a final verdict on it is still pending in courts.

The PSU has also come under attack for non-transparency with only one vendor for each region. But BSNL said it was a competitive bidding.

"Bids are supposed to be competitive. They are global bids," Goyal said.

BSNL had floated a tender last year for procuring equipment to expand its GSM network by 93 million lines in four zones -- North, West, South and East.

After evaluating technical bids, Ericsson was considered for the North and Eastern regions, while Huawei was offered the Southern region.

BSNL has justified the disqualification of Nokia Siemens from the mega tender, saying the Finnish company did not provide specification with regard to subscriber information (known as home location register) as per the requirement.

BSNL's tender technical specification had very clearly stated that HLR (which contain subscriber data) and home subscriber server, containing subscriber data for 3G services, should be a single logical entity.

After NSN's allegation that there was no transparency in selecting the bidders for its 93 million GSM lines expansion, the matter was referred to a two-member integration panel authorised by the CVC to scrutinise NSN's complaint and BSNL's justification.

The panel had given a clean chit to the telecom PSU, but the absence of adequate competition may force BSNL to go for reinviting bids and the development may delay the process by several months.