The Hindu Business Line : `Motorola, ZTE disqualified on technical grounds'

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd today came out strongly against allegations of being biased in evaluating the multi-billion dollar cellular tender for adding 45.5 million lines.

BSNL said that the processes were completely transparent and open. The company said the evaluation process for the financial bids would be completed in the next one month.

"The process of evaluation and finalisation will be completed in a month and we expect the first line to be operational by March 2007," the BSNL CMD, Mr A.K. Sinha, said. When asked about the reasons for disqualifying Motorola and Chinese company ZTE, Mr Sinha said it was purely on technical ground but declined to elaborate saying the matter was subjudice. "We shall reply to the Delhi High Court's notice within the time stipulated and we shall give all the details in that," Mr Sinha said.

BSNL said that it has had a long-term relationship with Motorola and ZTE in other telecom projects and therefore there was no malice in disqualifying the two vendors for the cellular infrastructure project. BSNL sources said that one of the reasons for not allowing the two companies to bid was that they did not have the experience in deploying 3G networks as stipulated in the tender conditions. Swedish telecom major Ericsson had emerged the lowest bidder followed by Nokia to supply equipment for GSM and 3G services. The entire project will cost nearly $6.5 billion over the next three years.

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