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BSNL to take two months to decide on bid for 5.5m mobile connections

http://www.3gmodem.com.hk/Huawei/B970.html

India's Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. said Friday it will take two months to decide on the winning bid to provide 5.5 million mobile telephone connections as the company tries to give its stalled expansion plans a shot in the arm.

BSNL has received bids from Alcatel-Lucent India Ltd., Ericsson India Pvt. Ltd. and Nokia Siemens Networks Pvt. Ltd., the state-run company's chairman, Kuldeep Goyal, told reporters on the sidelines of an industry event.

Capacity constraints have meant BSNL, India's seventh-largest mobile telephone services company, has struggled to keep pace with operators such as Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Vodafone Essar Ltd. in adding subscribers.

In March, BSNL scrapped a tender worth more than $6 billion for supplying equipment for 93 million mobile phone lines on the global system for mobile, or GSM, platform due to concerns over its procurement processes and procedures.

But last month, it released a document inviting bids for providing 5.5 million GSM telephone connections. The bid document didn't mention the value of the contract, but earlier in June Goyal said it would be worth about INR20 billion.

BSNL plans to install 3.37 million GSM connections in service Huawei B970 Router areas in north India and 2.13 million in the east of the country.

Separately, Goyal warned Friday that BSNL could post a net loss for last financial year ended March 31, 2010, primarily due to higher staff expenses. The company's listed state-run peer, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd., also cited higher staff expenses when it reported a full-year net loss of INR25.15 billion in May.

Junior Communications Minister Gurudas Kamat said in May that BSNL's net profit in the nine months through December 2009 reached INR1.78 billion. Kamat told lawmakers in the upper house of Parliament that the company notched revenue Huawei B970 Router of INR242.84 billion for the nine months, while expenses totaled INR232.96 billion.

Goyal added that he expects revenue from providing leased communications lines to corporate clients to grow 50% from INR18 billion recorded last financial year.

 Source： 3G mdoem