NEW DELHI: Homegrown telecom gear makers have refuted the state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) views on the reliability of indiginous equipment, saying that such products meet necessary standards, and can only be supplied after accessing quality, adding that the security concerns should be taken into account in line with ambitious Atmanirbhar (self-reliance) initiative.
Strongly disagreeing with state-owned telco, the Telecom Equipment and Services Export Promotion Council (Tepc) in a letter to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) dated December 4 said that, "as regards to the quality of products, the remarks (by BSNL) are absolutely vague and not specific. The indiginous equipment is purchased by BSNL after proper testing and infrastructure assessment."
Former telecom secretary Shyamal Ghosh-headed group represents domestic telecom equipment manufacturers.
The controversy between the multinationals with Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE on one side, and the domestic vendors such as Tejas Networks, Sterlite Technologies and Vihaan Networks have further snowballed following the BSNL's Rs 9,000-crore worth upcoming equipment procurement order for network expansion and deployment of new sites to kickstart commercial fourth generation or 4G services.
The public sector telco is, however cautious and is looking at quality and cost efficiencies in addition to a large-scale availability. "The equipment being deployed by BSNL has to be extremely reliable, well tested and proven its capabilities to meet or exceed high availability standards of 99.999. The equipment has to be carrier grade with advanced features," BSNL earlier said.
Pravin Kumar Purwar-headed telecom operator has raised a series of apprehensions in anticipation of the inclusion of homegrown telecom products, as a part of the Preference to Make in India (PMI) policy. However, the telco has already made an internal assessment, and as many as 29 products were identified, and a list was submitted to the department.
"The very purpose of the PPP-MII policy is to protect and promote the domestic products in the process of procurement by public entities," Arun Gupta, director-general, Tepc said, and added that the Chinese products (ZTE in BSNL case) are quoted at predatory prices to capture the public telecom networks.
The series of developments over the last few months have clearly indicated the differences between the state-owned telecom carrier and the telecom department (DoT) with the latter batting for domestic makers in line with the national policy initiatives.
The contentious matter is likely to go to the Prime Minister Office (PMO) doorstep since the Anshu Prakash-headed department remained indecisive on the matter of exclusion of foreign vendors in the public telecom network.
Recently, BSNL has also drawn flak from the empowered technology group (ETG) headed by principal scientific advisor (PSA) K VijayRaghavan on telco's reservations to use fourth-generation (4G) core network from local companies.
While BSNL is yet to do
necessary changes in the terms and conditions of the bid document,
several equipment companies have already initiated discussions to become
integral part of consortiums led by system integrators such as
Telecommunications Consultants India (TCIL), Indian Telephone Industries
(ITI), Tech Mahindra and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for the
installation, operations and maintenance of BSNL's commercial 4G
network.
The fourth-largest telco had to scrap the notice inviting tender (NIT), released in March this year, on the back of outcry from local telecom companies alleging restrictive conditions.
The developments are being seen as a discouragement to BSNL's existing partners such as Finnish Nokia and Chinese ZTE who were the front runners to bid for the migration of as many as 49,300 existing 2G and 3G sites to 4G, as well as deploy 7,000 new sites for counterpart Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) in Delhi and Mumbai metropolitans. BSNL is likely to take up MTNL's network operations in Delhi early next year.
The fourth-largest telco had to scrap the notice inviting tender (NIT), released in March this year, on the back of outcry from local telecom companies alleging restrictive conditions.
The developments are being seen as a discouragement to BSNL's existing partners such as Finnish Nokia and Chinese ZTE who were the front runners to bid for the migration of as many as 49,300 existing 2G and 3G sites to 4G, as well as deploy 7,000 new sites for counterpart Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) in Delhi and Mumbai metropolitans. BSNL is likely to take up MTNL's network operations in Delhi early next year.
No comments:
Post a Comment