BSNL Inks GSM Deal With ZTE

State-owned operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) has selected Chinese telecom vendor ZTE Corp. to help boost its GSM network capacity by 10.15 million GSM lines. It was already widely known that ZTE had won the deal, but now it has been officially announced. (See IndiaWatch: BSNL Picks Network Vendors, IndiaWatch: ZTE May Get Entire BSNL Deal and IndiaWatch: ZTE, Huawei Lowest Bidders for BSNL Deal.)

The operator has been going through a tough phase, dealing with financial pressures and losing subscribers on a consistent basis. The addition of more than 10 million lines to the capacity of its 2G network should help its efforts to sign up new customers. (See BSNL, TTSL Lose Subscribers In April: TRAI, BSNL May Go For A Tariff Hike and IndiaWatch: BSNL Seeks Survival Funds.)

ZTE will be involved in planning, financing, installing, testing, commissioning and maintaining the new GSM capacity, which is being added in northern and southern circles.

ZTE won the deal by undercutting its counterparts, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson AB and Nokia Siemens Networks.

This is not the first time that BSNL has selected ZTE. The Chinese vendor had earlier entered into a partnership with BSNL to deploy ultra-high-speed ADSL2+ and next-generation VDSL2+ broadband devices across BSNL's network in 15 circles. (See and .)

Rimit Singh, Correspondent, Light Reading India