The division of telecommunications (DoT) has agreed in-principle to Bharat Sanchar Nigam’s (BSNL) proposal to split its tender for rollout of 4G services into two components. The state-owned firm which is facing delays in floating a fresh tender ever considering that the initial one was cancelled in March final year, had recommended that as aspect of the split, Part A comprising 50,000 internet sites must be strictly reserved for domestic vendors.
In parallel, it must be permitted to float a different tender — Part B — for the remaining 50,000 internet sites which must be like the usual tender exactly where worldwide organizations like Nokia, Ericsson and other individuals could participate. It had recommended that if by the time of the technical evaluation of the Part B tender if any of the Indian vendor was capable to comprehensive effectively trials of its technologies (proof of idea), then they could also participate in it.
According to sources, the DoT will now seek the approval of the empowered technologies group (ETG), headed by principal scientific advisor K VijayRaghavan, so that BSNL can go ahead with a two-aspect tender.
The DoT’s approval came since BSNL had written to it that its survival depended on early rollout of 4G services and so far there was no established Indian core readily available. It had stated that it apprehended that barring TCS, which has tied up with C-DoT to create a core, other individuals may well not be effective. Even if domestic vendors had been effective in trial runs, they would take additional time to create requisite quantities, which would additional delay the rollout of its 4G services.
BSNL had stated that as per the expression of interest floated by it, firms have to have to comprehensive the trials in 4 months, but except TCS, most firms had sought for extension of the time frame to 6-8 months.
The enterprise had stated that it anticipated 4G rollout inside a period of 10 months on effective completion of trials by neighborhood firms. Assuming that PoC got effectively completed in 4 months, the network could be rolled out right after 14 months from that date. But, in case PoC was not completed inside the specified timelines then rollout timelines would also get extended.
The dilemma for BSNL arose as a government-appointed committee had advised that the core of the 4G network must be constructed by domestic vendors beneath a method integrator model and not worldwide firms like Ericsson or Nokia. Further, the IPR or licence/copyright for the supply code of the application must be owned by an Indian enterprise and it will have to have unrestricted, irrevocable access and licence to modify the supply code and provide application assistance for all future versions of the application. The supply code must be deposited in an escrow account and must be the very same as the version deployed in the field.