Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) may face further delay in the pan-India rollout of 4G services. A new report has suggested that the state-owned telecom service provider may have a cost-related issue with the 4G gear it should have bought from a consortium including the Tata group. And because the cost of installing 4G core-based towers by the Tata group is higher than BSNL’s estimates, the state-owned telecom giant is now looking for other companies to supplier its 4G equipment – a process that could take an additional 18 months. can.
The Times of India has reported that BSNL is facing trouble in negotiating a supplier. It focused on the Tata group, essentially because it could choose only from local suppliers to upgrade its existing network to 4G. Prices quoted by the consortium that includes Tata Group, Tejas Networks and Center for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) crossed Rs 20,000 crore, while internal estimates by BSNL showed that it would be maxed out at Rs 17,173 crore on network upgrades. can spend.
So, while Tata’s estimates do not sit well with BSNL, the state-owned company may now look at other bidders, including Reliance Jio. As per the report, Jio, which claims to have developed indigenous EPC (Evolved Packet Core), essentially used to deploy the network for 4G, could now be the first choice of BSNL. While Jio’s 4G gear is likely to align with BSNL’s projections for a network upgrade, the former’s EPC may be upgraded to support 5G services in the latter – something BSNL plans to deploy next year .
Apart from Reliance Jio, BSNL also has other options. Top bidders include Mumbai-headquartered Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Himachal Futuristic Communications Limited (HFCL) and Tech Mahindra. All of these companies have shown proof of concept, which means they have demonstrated that their network equipment uses a viable design that can be commercially deployed with the right partner, the report said. However, given the limited budget that BSNL has to upgrade its existing network, there is no information on what these companies will charge.
There may be a delay of 18 months after the BSNL 4G rollout, then appeared first on BGR India.
