The Hindu Business Line : BSNL union supports Motorola’s disqualification

New Delhi, July 10 The Joint Forum of BSNL employees’ unions came out in defence of the BSNL management’s decision to disqualify Motorola from bidding for the 45.5-million cellular line project saying that the US company had partnered with Lucent for supplying core equipment even though the latter had declared in 2004 that it was going out of the GSM business.

In a fact-sheet the Joint Forum said: “Motorola is a world leader in the radio part of GSM but has no base in Core Network Switching Systems. In the current tender, Motorola submitted documents of partnership with Lucent for supply of core equipment. Lucent supplied 2G equipment under Phases I and II to BSNL’s West Zone circles in 2002 and declared in 2004 that it would exit the GSM business. No upgradation of the network for such functionalities as GPRS and EDGE has been supported by Lucent since then and BSNL has been suffering till date. So, how can Lucent be believed to supply 2G equipment through Motorola to BSNL now, in the year 2007.”

On the pricing issue the BSNL Union said that the actual price works out to Rs 3,550 per line and not Rs 4,500. It said that BSNL had sought supply of 2G equipment in three phases, of 14 million, 7 million and 3.5 million.

As per the tender conditions the price for Phase 2 will be half that of Phase 1, and that of Phase 3, one-fourth. “The weighted average for all three phases gets reduced to about Rs 3,550,” said the union.

The forum also said that price comparison with the MTNL tender (at Rs 2,800 per line) was incorrect as MTNL’s jurisdiction is limited to Delhi and Mumbai but BSNL covers widely scattered geographical areas, including rural regions. “Cost component on management of various resources, efficient utilisation of resources, cost of transportation and storage of equipment, etc., in widely scattered geography is obviously bound to be more in the case of BSNL,” said the Union.

The Communications Minister, Mr A. Raja, has sought clarifications from BSNL on each of these issues.

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