Dot Not To Reverse Scrapping Of Tender

Some bidders in the tender and the telecom equipment manufacturers association had written to communications minister Beni Prasad Verma protesting the scrapping of the tender.

The department of telecommunications had cancelled the tender because of ambiguity in technical specifications listed in the tender document.

The confusion in the tender, which opened in late December 1995, had led bidders to quote equipment with different features and configurations. Eighteen bidders had responded to the tender.

The tender floated on October 10, 1995, had requisitioned bids for 812 terminals of six GHz SDH microwave equipment with 1+1 configuration, 282 terminals of the 2+1 configuration and 40 of 3+1 configured terminals.

 

The lowest bidder in all the three configurations of microwave transmission equipment was Crompton Greaves, with the highest bid coming from Siemens.

In the 1+1 configuration, Crompton Greaves had quoted Rs 11.56 lakh, while Siemens bid Rs 21.74 per terminal.

For the 2+1 configured equipment, Crompton Greaves had bid Rs 10.19 lakh per terminal and Siemens Rs 25.35 lakh. The former had quoted Rs 6.75 lakh for the 3+1 configured equipment, while Siemens had bid at Rs 17.27 lakh. The confusion in the specifications arose because the tender guidelines wanted bidders to quote for equipment with and without XPIC facility.

XPIC allows for better utilisation of frequency bands during transmission.