18 tele, IT cos race for BSNL's tender

Companies such as Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Cisco and HP have evinced interest in bidding for BSNL's 45.5 million GSM line tender.

As many as 18 leading telecom and IT companies including Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Cisco and HP have evinced interest in bidding for 45.5 million GSM line to be added by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited.

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"Eighteen companies have bought the tender document. Virtually all the big players are there like Siemens, Nortel, Nokia, Motorola, Huawei, Sun Micro Systems, HP and some other smaller companies," BSNL CMD AK Sinha told reporters.

The bidders would be able to seek clarification with regard to tender document by April 21 and after that BSNL would hold the bidder conference on April 28, he said adding the company would give reply to all clarification by May 3 and bids would be opened on May 10.

Alcatel, a French equipment manufacturer which has bagged an order for about 18 million lines through reserved quota for ITI, would also be eligible for bidding for rest of the zones.

BSNL would be adding 63 million lines but 30 per cent was reserved for another PSU ITI. Alcatel is the indirect beneficiary of this move by virtue of its tie-up with ITI.

BSNL has not stopped any company from bidding saying that ultimately the conditions laid down in the tender document would apply for all the companies.