BSNL shortlists three firms for Rs 600-cr project

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has short-listed HCL, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for its Rs 600-crore project to set up an MPLS-based network system (IP-based network). This will provide all kinds of video, voice, and data services on a turnkey basis.

"We have shortlisted HCL, Wipro and TCS. The contract will be finalised in a few days," a BSNL official said. Under a telecom department directive, the project is being executed by BSNL for the Indian Air Force.

Around 10 companies, including two state-owned vendors, Bharat Electricals Ltd and ITI, had filed an expression of interest for the project in June this year.

The network will mainly comprise carrier class of high-end core routers, edge routers, layers, switches, VoIP equipment, data centres, NMS with disaster recovery, voice gateway, messaging centres, antivirus gateway etc.

BSNL will provide the optical fibre and bandwidth at the location of the core routers and edge routers for the carriage of MPLS traffic. The vendor will supply the hardware and the software and ensure their integration and commissioning for the operations.