BSNL mandates reliable products condition for supplying 4G equipment  

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) on Monday said it would comply with the ‘trusted products’ under the Department of Telecommunications’ (DoT) mandate, waiving the condition of sending the source code to the Escrow account while adding that it domestic core must be supplied by a company with indian headquarters.

In a clarification to questions from stakeholders about detailed notices inviting e-tenders, it rolled out in January this year, the state telecom said that the guideline regarding ‘reliable products’ issued by the department together with the changes will apply in the procurement. of 4G equipment.

Telco further said that it has removed the clause that sought the Indian companies to insert the source code for the core as well as radio access networks in an Escrow account.

After the suppliers wanted clarification on the origin of a company that is willing to participate in the tender process to supply core equipment, the state-controlled telecommunications company said: “The offered core must be domestic which must be an Indian core supplied by an Indian company, and added that standard third-party articles with multiple sources such as firewalls as well as routers and switches are not necessarily included in the Indian core.

“The Indian company should be incorporated, registered and having its head office in India, and should not be a subsidiary of another company headquartered outside India, and it should have a global head office in India,” it said, adding that the bidder or members in the consortium (s) and their respective parent company shall not have ownership interests of more than 10% or operate partnerships in the mobile segment with other mobile operators except Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) in India.

However, BSNL added that the license or copyright for the source code of the core element software should be owned by the Indian company. The company must own or have unlimited, irrevocable access and license to change the source code and offer software support for all future versions of the software, and applied for a self-declaration certificate from the company’s principal manager.

However, to speed up the next generation of network development, the state-owned telephone is expected to issue a parallel notice inviting bids to allow multinational companies such as Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung, while an Indian company successfully demonstrates 4G networks via a proof-of-concept would be allowed to participate in the tender process. SportsBeezer