Huawei dumped from BSNL tender

Huawei has been dumped by India's BSNL as the key supplier for its 20 million line GSM network following claims that the conditions imposed by Huawei were unacceptable.

The vendor has yet to comment on the speculation but BSNL confirmed the termination of the deal to The Economic Times.

"There was no scope for accepting conditions as the order was placed after detailed negotiations and as a government owned firm (BSNL) we do not accept conditions," a senior BSNL official was quoted as stating.

The carrier’s comprehensive network rollout has been plagued by difficulty from the inception of  the project.

Earlier in the year the carrier was forced to confront the home ministry, who had issued a directive against engaging Chinese equipment makers in building networks in the border areas.

Meanwhile Nokia-Siemens sought legal action for not being selected as a vendor.

Home ministry opposition had prompted BSNL to choose Huawei for installing 20 million GSM lines in the south, a region without an international border.

According to media reports sources, BSNL’s unexpected action follows on from Huawei’s conditional supply of equipment.

Earlier this year, Indian media had speculated that if complications with the Huawei tender  emerged, Alcatel-Lucent may be asked to take over the contract.

BSNL has yet to detail its next move but it is understood that it is considering re-tendering the entire network deployment.

Ericsson is still in negotiations for the portion of the contract for the North and Eastern regions covering 25-million lines for the North

Zone and 18-million lines for the East Zone. Of the total, around 21 million lines must be provisioned for 3G services as well as GSM.

There is no vendor  shortlisted for the Western region.