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BSNL demands right price from cellphone vendors

Cellular equipment vendors will have to offer right price to the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited to start nation-wide services, Telecom Commission chairman Shyamal Ghosh said on Tuesday.

Talking to newspersons on the sidelines of a regional seminar in Bangalore on e-commerce under the aegis of the Asia Pacific Telecommunity, he said the commission would assist the BSNL in striking at a right price during resumed negotiations with multinational cellular equipment vendors like Lucent and Siemens.

Ghosh said BSNL, which was the third or fourth operator for cellular services in most of the circles, should be provided with the right environment to compete with the early starters.

The vendors should also realise that BSNL would be buying the cellular switches in millions and not in hundred-thousands. Thus there should be some price reduction.

Negotiations with the BSNL and the multinational vendors broke down early this year with the latter refusing to offer price concessions to BSNL. However they have now come forward to renegotiate the prices. This process had delayed the introduction of cellular services by BSNL.

Asked about the Sankhyavani National Broadband Backbone Project from which the US-based partner had withdrawn due to delay in implementation of the project by India, Ghosh said that BSNL would take up the project.

This was to enhance the broadband bandwidth from 2.5 gb to 10 gb per second by 2005 and 40 gb per second by 2010, he added.

The BSNL would have to take up newer technologies such as dense wave multiplexing division.

Replying to another question he said there was no proposal before the government to increase the cap on foreign direct investment in telecom sector, which was at present 49 per cent.

He said the licensing authority now vested with the telecom commission would be handed over to the convergence commission once the Convergence Bill now being vetted by the Standing Committee of Parliament was approved (by the Parliament). The bill was likely to be taken up during the winter session.

To another question, he said the country was now adding 1000 telephone lines an hour and a teledensity of four per cent would be achieved this year. The pace of development witnessed in the sector would see that the target of 7.5 per cent slated for 2005 would be achieved before time.

The growth this year was estimated at 22 per cent and for cellular 100 per cent. The government had already cleared 31 new lincenses for basic services and 16 for cellular services.

UNI

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