Franco-American equipment vendor Alcatel-Lucent has made an offer to Bharat Sanchar Nigam for supplying GSM network gear at the price quoted by Chinese vendor Huawei.

The move comes even as the state-owned telecom firm is engaged in negotiations with Ericsson for buying equipment for East and North Zones.

Huawei has agreed to supply GSM equipment to support about 8 million subscribers in South zone at about Rs 2,600 per line.

BSNL has already given an advanced purchase order to the Chinese vendor.

But according to sources close to the development, BSNL has placed orders to buy only 2G equipment from Huawei even though the tender was floated for both 2G and 3G gear.

The offer to match Huawei’s price by Alcatel Lucent has been made through Government-owned manufacturing firm Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) since the Franco-American company had earlier been disqualified by BSNL on technical grounds.

Alcatel-Lucent and ITI have an ongoing partnership to manufacture GSM equipment at the PSU’s factories.

Pressure on Ericsson

While BSNL is yet to accept the offer, the move could put pressure on Ericsson to move quickly on the negotiations.

Sources said that though Ericsson has brought down its initial bid substantially, there is still a gap of three to four per cent between what BSNL wants and the Swedish major is willing to offer.

“The negotiations are heading towards a conclusion. Hopefully the deal with Ericsson will go through. If not, then we have to look at other options including re-tendering or giving additional contracts to existing vendors,” said a BSNL official.
Taken from Business Line