Oct. 19, 2009 (The Hindu Business Line) --

Thomas K. Thomas
Adith Charlie

While Gemini was the lowest bidder, with a quote of Rs 983 crore, ZTE is the second lowest, having quoted Rs 1,065 crore, according to top sources close to the development. Harris Stratex and Alvarion (NASDAQ:ALVR) quoted Rs 1,094 crore and Rs 1,101 crore, respectively.

The bids were opened by BSNL at its Chennai office on Monday. Harris Stratex had put in its bid through its recently acquired WiMax firm Telsima. The company has partnered India’s ICOMM for the project. ICOMM and Harris Stratex are already doing a WiMax broadband project for BSNL in Kerala. Gemini had also bagged a WiMax project along with Huawei in the first phase of BSNL’s rural broadband project.
Other bidders

Samsung, Huawei and Motorola (NYSE:MOT) had also put in their bids but lost out on pricing. Huawei, which usually emerges among the lowest bidders, this time had the highest quote at Rs 1,600 crore. Samsung had put in its bid through Spanco Ltd.

A total of seven companies had put in their bids for the project, of which the lowest four will be picked for the contract. The project envisages covering 2.5 lakh blocks across the country whereby BSNL will set up Common Service Centres. The first phase of the rural project had envisaged about 1,000 blocks.

The PSU plans to roll out WiMax under three projects, including setting up broadband infrastructure in rural areas. In the second project, BSNL plans to roll out broadband infrastructure in the urban areas.

While Huawei has been selected for launching services in Punjab, Harris Stratex had bagged the contract for Kerala. The tender for other urban circles will be floated later. The third project is on a franchisee model, which ran into controversy after unknown entities bid for the project. BSNL had issued a revised tender for the franchisee project which is yet to be opened.

BSNL and MTNL are the only two operators to have got the spectrum for rolling out WiMax broadband services.