BSNL likely to delay opening of GSM bids

State-owned BSNL may delay opening of financial bids for its 45.5-GSM- line tender beyond May 10 as most of the telecom vendors have sought more time to study the offer details.

BSNL, on April 28, held discussions with the 18 telecom and IT companies, which evinced interest in bidding for the tender, and the PSU today submitted all clarifications sought by the equipment companies.

"Between today and opening of bids there would be only 5-6 working days. The time is too less to incorporate the changes and thus we have sought time from BSNL," one of the equipment suppliers said.

When contacted, BSNL CMD A K Sinha said: "We have received requests from most of the vendors but no decision has yet been taken. We are looking into it." Sources in the know, however, said BSNL may consider vendors' request in view of the magnitude of the tender.

On the type of queries from the vendors, Sinha declined to comment, saying the process was still on. Eighteen leading telecom and IT companies, including Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Cisco and HP, have evinced interest in bidding for 45.5 million GSM lines to be added by BSNL.

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

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

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.

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