The state-owned telecom giant BSNL has passed an equipment tender for 93 million lines. Six international telecom network majors will be bidding in what is termed as the ‘world’s largest telecom equipment tender’.

The six big telecom companies participating are Nokia Siemens, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel Networks, ZTE and Huawei. It surely is the world’s largest telecom equipment tender even including vendors who do not have setups in India. And that is the reason Chinese network Huaewei shows on the list. Motorola has not participated in the bidding process due to its tussle with BSNL over a previous tender.

As per the bid telecom vendors will provide 93 million GSM lines to BSNL. According to BSNL sources the initial bid will be judged on technical parameters. The companies passing the technical evaluation will automatically enter the next round where prices of each bid would be compared.

On the other hand 10 stand-alone tower firms have bid for setting up towers – Tecmet, Esstel, GTL, Nextra, KEC International, TVS, Teracom, Acme Telepower, Susana Towers and Aster. Eeven they are wooing BSNL to bag the massive contract.

BSNL is spreading the 93 million lines order over a three year period. The contract is split in four parts:

North Zone   25 million
South Zone   25 million
West Zone    25 million
East Zone     18 million

One particular company would not be awarded two zones. This condition in the tender implies that a telecom vendor can attain a maximum order of 50 million lines.

The BSNL sources said that the entire process is going to take a while.