As lots of as 12 Indian and worldwide firms have shown interest in rolling out the 4G network of BSNL, prominent names amongst them contain Tech Mahindra, TCS, Nokia, Ericsson, Tejas Networks amongst other people. Even Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE have expressed their intention to participate in the tender.
The government will hold a pre-bid meeting on Monday to clear doubts of the potential bidders. According to sources, 12 firms have bought the expression of interest (EoI) document, issued by BSNL. The Indian firms contain Tejas Network, ITI, Larsen & Toubro, Tech Mahindra, TCS, Sterlite Technologies and HFCL. The worldwide ones are Ericsson, Huawei, ZTE, Nokia and Mavenir Systems.
Last week, BSNL had issued the EoI for rolling out its 4G services, for which only Indian firms are permitted to provide the core network via a method integrator model. The EoI came more than six months following an earlier tender was cancelled simply because of complaints that it does not market homegrown firms.
According to prime sources in the government, the reality that even worldwide firms have shown keen interest in rolling out 4G network for BSNL, proves that they are fine with the situations. Earlier, the worldwide firms had expressed their unhappiness about the situation of maintaining the supply code in an escrow account.
As per the EoI, the core shall be Indian and the IPR or licence/copyright for the supply code of the application must be owned by an Indian firm, and it need to have unrestricted, irrevocable access and licence to modify the supply code and provide application help for all future versions of the application.
For the radio network like base tower stations (BTS), these worldwide firms can bid but they require to deposit their supply code in an escrow account. “The escrowed version of the software shall be upgraded/updated regularly and will be the same as the version in the field,” the EoI stated.