BBNL's cancelled tender for connecting villages shows complexity in bidding

To offer the higher service requirement, operators would need to ensure uninterrupted power, safety of cables and so on

Earlier this month, government-owned Bharat Broadband Network Ltd (BBNL) cancelled a Rs 19,000 crore tender to lay optical fibre cable (OFC) across villages because there were no bidders to execute the project. The cancellation puts at risk the target of broadband connectivity for every village by 2024.

To be clear, there is no shortage of enthusiasm in the private sector to bid for projects in rural areas, per se. After all, they offer wireless telephony across the country. But companies were unenthused by the way the government, specifically the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), wants to go about its broadband plans.

Using satellites