With Re 1 a minute STD expected to do wonders for BSNL's mobile traffic, the PSU is not in a mood to delay its mega 60 million mobile line tender beyond this month.
"The tender will be out in next 10 days. We can't afford to delay it further everything is being readied", BSNL CMD AK Sinha said after the announcement of 'OneIndia' tariffs.
The tender is estimated at $4.5 billion and is expected to hot up the fiercely competitive Indian telecom equipment market fought by MNCs like Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola among others mainly.
BSNL officials said the tender will have 30 per cent reservation of 15-18 million GSM lines for public sector ITI.
This leaves about 42-45 million lines for other bidders who will participate in it.
BSNL, with currently over 1.4 crore mobile subscribers, has been planning to cut the waiting list for a long time.
Since the tender is going to be open, it can not bar any applicant bidder.
That paves the way for Chinese company Huawei Technologies, once show caused by BSNL for dishonouring a CDMA project of the PSU after bagging it by bidding lowest, for participating in the tender.
{{/usCountry}}That paves the way for Chinese company Huawei Technologies, once show caused by BSNL for dishonouring a CDMA project of the PSU after bagging it by bidding lowest, for participating in the tender.
{{/usCountry}}"Huawei can not be barred.. It is an open tender and the law is where the company has defaulted (CDMA) for that segment only some actions can be initiated but not in other tenders which are open," BSNL officials said.