Nortel bids lowest for BSNL tender

US based telecom equipment provider Nortel Networks has emerged as the lowest bidder for the Rs 6,000 crore Global System for Mobile (GSM) tender floated by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL).

The contract, touted as the world's single largest tender, is for 12 million GSM based mobile lines for the public sector company. While Nortel has emerged as the lowest bidder in all the three regions of north, east and south, Finnish equipment manufacturer Nokia and Chinese company Huawei are understood to be the second lowest bidders in these regions. Alcatel had already been awarded a part of this contract, for the western zone, under the quota system owing to its tie up with ITI.

The bid documents for the three regions, opened today by BSNL were being studied by the company and therefore, the amount quoted by the various firms was not known immediately.

Industry sources said that as per the initial offer made by the various bidders, Nortel was the lowest bidder, however, discussions were being carried out between vendors and the public sector company before the actual numbers would be made available.

They also said that Nortel could not be awarded the contract for all the three regions since the terms laid down by BSNL put the limit to a maximum of two regions.

In that scenario Nokia or Huawei could get a piece of the project. Industry sources said that the entire process of awarding the contract could take more than a month.

Other companies which were in the race for the multi million dollar project included Motorola, Alcatel and Ericsson. The bids were made in March this year.

One of the bidders who lost out today said that those companies which had not got any contracts so far in the Indian telecom market had quoted really low prices for the equipment which made it difficult for the others to compete.

BSNL currently has more than 5 million mobile subscribers and has set a target of 25 million by end of 2005. With its network reaching full capacity, the company was being able to rope in only a lakh subscribers every month across the country compared to more than 4 lakh new subscribers every month when it launched the service in October 2003.