Nokia, Nortel bag BSNL cellular tender
By siliconindia staff writer   |   Wednesday, 11 August 2004, 19:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: After an inordinate delay, state-owned BSNL has finally placed advance purchase orders with Nortel for the northern region and Nokia for the western region for its cellular network expansion. "We have placed advance purchase orders with Nortel for southern and eastern region and Nokia for north zone for our cellular expansion plans,” NK Mangla, director (commercial), BSNL, told PTI here. The contract for western region had already been awarded to Alcatel-ITI. He, however, declined to comment on the size of the order. According to the bidding clause, a company can be awarded the contract for a maximum of two regions. Nortel bid lowest in the three regions and Nokia was the second lowest in two regions. BSNL, the country's largest telecom firm, is expanding its mobile network and had floated a tender of 11 million GSM lines and the tender value is believed to be in the region of Rs 6,000 crore.

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