Govt awards Kochi-Lakshadweep submarine OFC project to NEC

Japanese conglomerate NEC’s Indian subsidiary has beaten domestic telecom equipment manufacturers to win the Kochi-Lakshadweep Islands undersea optical fibre cable link project.

“The bidding process has concluded. NEC was the only bidder and will now be awarded the project. All approvals are in place. It is just a matter of time before it is made public…,” a senior government official told BusinessLine.

Asked if this amounted to favouring one company, the official said everything was in public domain. Only one company met the criteria and got eligible. The official added that the project was approved by the Digital Communications Commission at its last meeting.

The tender for the ₹1,072-crore project has been hanging fire for long. Companies that are part of the Telecom Equipment and Services Export Promotion Council and the Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association of India have written several times to the PMO, the Department of Telecommunications and the NITI Aayog that the tender was made to favour only one company, NEC India.

“The restrictive eligibility conditions stipulated in the tender which were somewhat softened, however, not to the extent that any Indian company or any other foreign competitor except NEC India could bid in the project,” wrote TEPA in its August 31 letter to PMO.

Recently, the companies represented to Neeraj Sinha, Senior Advisor for Digital Communications at NITI Aayog, and he has sought to know from the two bodies the capacities of Indian firms.

The BSNL project will lay a dedicated cable system with 200 Gbps initial capacity to connect all 11 islands of Lakshadweep. The Hindu BusinessLine