BSNL says Nokia Siemens did not meet tender requirement

State-owned BSNL today justified the disqualification of Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) from the mega 93-million GSM line expansion, saying the Finnish company did not provide specification with regard to subscriber information (known as Home Location Register) as per the PSU’s requirement.

BSNL’s tender technical specification had very clearly stated that HLR (which contain subscriber data) and Home Subscriber Server (HSS), containing subscriber data for 3G services, should be a single logical entity.

However, NSN maintained in its bid that at present their solution provides stand-alone HLR and HSS, which did not comply with BSNL tender requirement, BSNL is understood to have said in its reply at the Andhra Pradesh High Court.

NSN declined to comment, saying the matter is sub-judice and added that the company has replied in respective courts to BSNL’s letter.

The tender specification required six million capacity of HLR/HSS to be available in a single unit, whereas the NSN solution provides only five million capacity, sources close to the development said.

NSN had alleged that there was no transparency in selecting the bidders for its 93 million GSM lines expansion, envisaging an investment of about Rs 32,000 crore.

BSNL has also referred the matter to a two-member integration panel authorised by the CVC to scrutinise NSN’s complaint and BSNL’s justification.

According to BSNL, specification required mated pair of HLR/HSS to be provided so that in the case of failure of one of the HLR/HSS, the mated pair can take over the traffic without any disruption to customer service, sources said.

This was kept to meet the requirement for quality of service as per the Trai guidelines.

However, NSN offered a solution, which provided switch over time as ten minutes, which is a very “serious deviation” to BSNL tender requirement, sources added.

BSNL had also prescribed user certificates for minimum installations for various products in terms of working subscribers and total number of different installations.

NSN could not produce the certificates from the users for the requisite installations for quite a few products offered in its bid, BSNL sources claimed.

BSNL had floated a tender last year for procuring 93 million lines for GSM equipment for the 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. No decision for the Western region has been taken yet.