Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has been under a lot of pressure financially because of losing subscribers and low revenues. The telco’s 4G tenders have been time and again interfered with and delayed. After a long time, a little development related to the 4G tender of the company has emerged. According to an ET Telecom report, Indian vendors, for whom BSNL has reserved 57,000 4G sites nationally, submitted Expression of Interest (EoI) for participating in the telco’s 4G tender.
BSNL 4G Tender Sees TCS, L&T, Galore Networks and More Showing Interest
Indian companies, including the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Tech Mahindra, HFCL, ITI Limited, and Galore Networks, have submitted EoI for BSNL’s 4G tender. As per the publication, Tech Mahindra, HFCL, and L&T submitted their bid with US-based Mavenir for radio and Mumbai-based Pertsol for core technology. The highlight of the submissions was Galore Networks. It is a Bengaluru based company that claims to offer Internet-of-Things (IoT), 5G, Cloud solutions, and legacy network products. Galore hasn’t partnered with any other company to source radio and core technology. BSNL is yet to finalise the EoIs. The state-run telco will give the letter of intent to all the qualified companies after it has reviewed the EoIs. Further, the qualified bidders will have to present a bank guarantee (BG) of Rs 5 crore to show that they can start with the Proof of Concept (PoC) and complete it within 4 months. According to the publication, BSNL will allot one city to each selected company to show their PoC. There are eight cities in total, and each MSI will get one city. If their technology comes across as successful, they will be allowed to be a part of the tender. BSNL’s 4G network can be rolled out in 10 months if the local companies can generate Proof of Concept (PoC) within 4 months. So the state-run telco will take at least 14 months from now to come out with live 4G networks. However, if there are any more delays in the trials phase, it would result in an extended time for the network rollout. BSNL’s survival depends on the success of its 4G networks; the telco must ensure that it is rolled out as fast as possible.
