New Delhi, July 15

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd has once again deferred its plans to rope in private players to roll out WiMax services on a franchisee basis. The PSU had earlier said that it would start issuing new tender documents from June 24 but has now deferred it indefinitely.

BSNL was forced to completely scrap its first bid document after it was discovered that five of the six bidders shortlisted by the PSU existed only on paper. The five companies had identical corporate information including contact address, contact person, e-mail id, and lawyer.

New date soon

BSNL officials said the company will soon set a new date for issuing the new tender document. They said that various terms and conditions in the document were being finalised before issuing it to interested bidders to keep the project out of more controversies.

BSNL officials said there will be no one-time fee that the selected franchisees will have to pay upfront.

Instead, the private players who roll out the services using BSNL’s spectrum will have to pay part of the cost incurred by the PSU in acquiring the radio frequency over a period of time.

When contacted Mr Kuldeep Goyal, Chairman and Managing Director, BSNL said, “There is no one time upfront fee that our franchisees will have to pay. But the charges for using our spectrum will be amortised over the period of the agreement with the private player. This was part of the scheme right from the beginning and not something we have introduced anew.”

BSNL had invited bids in 16 circles and had said that only those companies with a turnover of over Rs 100 crore for two consecutive financial years can apply.

Norms

While the company has deferred the date for issuing the tender document it is not clear whether the PSU will change the norms for having minimum turnover or go ahead with earlier notified eligibility conditions.

The franchisee company will have to invest in setting up the WiMax network. Apart from paying for the spectrum usage, the company offering the highest revenue share to BSNL will be selected.

The state-owned company is increasingly adopting the franchisee model to reduce costs.

It is offering IPTV services with HFCL on revenue-sharing basis.

The PSU has invited bids from private players to set up Internet Data Centres in various parts of the country on a revenue share basis.

Taken from Business Line

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