सुशील गिरधर का नया हिंदी ब्लाग

Looking to expand its network in rural India and the onset of the 3G services round the corner, state-owned BSNL today opened the large tender for 93 million GSM lines for which as many as six companies have made a bid.

Through these 93 million lines, BSNL also plans to extend coverage of its GSM mobile services to all villages having population of more than 1,000 persons. Besides, 25 per cent of these lines are for operating the 3G equipment.

The tender is worth $9 billion and was floated two months back.

Six telecom vendors, including Nokia-Siemens Network, have bid for the 93-million GSM lines contract. These include Nokia-Siemens Network, Ericsson, Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel and ZTE. Surprisingly, Motorola has not bid for the contract.

As the BSNL opened the bids, communications and IT minister A Raja said BSNL would provide services to all villages having population more than 1,000 persons.

BSNL will also introduce value-added services like mobile TV, mobile broadband, MMS, location-based services etc, he said. The minister informed that value-added services, like mobile banking, mobile advertisement, tele-education and lost mobile tracking system, were also planned to be launched by BSNL during the current year.