Global majors bid for BSNL's mega tender

Telecom equipment manufacturers Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Siemens and ZTE, a Chinese company, have bid for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd's tender for 45.5 million GSM lines.

The notable dropouts were Nortel and Huawei, the company said. "We have formed a seven-member technical evaluation committee to look into the commercial and technical aspects of the bids," BSNL Chairman and Managing Director AK Sinha said.

"The committee has five BSNL officials and two telecom experts. The evaluation and allotment of the tender is expected to be over in 2-3 months," Sinha said.

Financial bids of only those vendors who qualified the technical bids would be opened, he added.