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BSNL mega tender for 42 mn lines this month

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

Bhaskar Hazarika

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NEW DELHI: State owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) today announced that it would award 30 percent of its billion dollar tender to a public sector undertaking.

The mega tender for expansion of nation-wide mobile operations now would be for 42 million lines instead of 60 million. The 30 percent of the tender would be awarded to a public sector undertaking under the 'Reserved Quota'.

The contract for cellular upgradation is worth $4.5 billion (about Rs 21,000 crore).“The official work has started as this tender is the biggest ever for us. This is the reason it is consuming more time,” BSNL chairman and managing director, A K Sinha said. The tender would be issued within this month.

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Initially the tender was expected to lay down 60 million lines, envisaging an investment of about $4.5 billion. The remaining 42 million lines would be for three regions of North, South and East, while the contract for Western Region would be awarded to a public sector undertaking.

The department officials added that in the next two months left in the current fiscal, the company is targeting to add eight million mobile lines with two million each for the four zones under its ongoing expansion plan of adding 14 million lines.

In the fiscal year 2006-2007 BSNL would lay 20 million lines across the country of which 80 per cent would be for mobile. BSNL officials said that this initiative has been taken in the view of increasing demand for mobiles. The present UPA government is also targeting to connect 14,000 villages with one telephone in each village in the next two years.

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