New Delhi, June 17: State-owned BSNL on Wednesday justified the disqualification of Nokia Siemens from the mega 93 million GSM line expansion, saying the Finnish company did not provide specification with regard to subscriber information (known as Home Location Register) as per the PSU`s requirement.
BSNL`s tender technical specification had very clearly
stated that HLR (which contain subscriber data) and Home
Subscriber Server (HSS), containing subscriber data for 3G
services, should be a single logical entity.
However, NSN maintained in its bid that at present
their solution provides stand-alone HLR and HSS, which did not
comply with BSNL tender requirement, BSNL is understood to
have said in its reply at the Andhra Pradesh High Court.
NSN declined to comment, saying the matter is sub-judice
and added that the company has replied in respective courts to
BSNL`s letter.
The tender specification required six million capacity of
HLR/HSS to be available in a single unit, whereas the NSN
solution provides only five million capacity, sources close to
the development said.
NSN had alleged that there was no transparency in
selecting the bidders for its 93 million GSM lines expansion,
envisaging an investment of about Rs 32,000 crore.
BSNL has also referred the matter to a two-member
integration panel authorised by the CVC to scrutinise NSN`s
complaint and BSNL`s justification.
According to BSNL, specification required mated pair of
HLR/HSS to be provided so that in the case of failure of one
of the HLR/HSS, the mated pair can take over the traffic
without any disruption to customer service, sources said.
This was kept to meet the requirement for quality of
service as per the TRAI guidelines.
However, NSN offered a solution, which provided switch
over time as ten minutes, which is a very "serious deviation"
to BSNL tender requirement, sources added.
BSNL had also prescribed user certificates for minimum
installations for various products in terms of working
subscribers and total number of different installations.
NSN could not produce the certificates from the users for
the requisite installations for quite a few products offred in
its bid, BSNL sources claimed.
BSNL had floated a tender last year for procuring 93
million lines for GSM equipment for the four zones -- North,
West, South and East.
After evaluating technical bids, Ericsson was considered
for the North and Eastern regions while Huawei was offered
the Southern region. No decision for the Western region
has been taken yet.
Bureau Report
