TCS, ITI bag advance orders worth Rs 15,700 crore from BSNL

22 May 2023 , 09:33 AM

Tata Consultancy Services and ITI have received advance purchase orders worth Rs 15,700 crore from Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL). The order received is for 1,00,000 4G sites, stated the sources.

One-fifth of these sites would be deployed by the state-run ITI. It has a 20% reservation in BSNL’s next-generation network deployment.

The telecom operator will also issue circle-wise purchase orders to procure the equipment. These advance purchase orders were issued on May 19.

BSNL’s 4G roll-out comes at a time when private telecom conglomerates like Reliance and Airtel have already completed their 5G rollout in the country.

On May 8, the Group of Ministers (GoM) gave the green signal for the deployment of 100,000 sites to implement BSNL’s 4G network. The consortium leading the initiative, spearheaded by TCS, includes Tejas Networks and C-DoT. 

TCS, headquartered in Mumbai, holds a controlling interest in Tejas Networks, based in Bengaluru.

In the deployment led by TCS, the consortium will utilize core equipment developed by C-DoT, while the radio network will be supplied by Tejas Networks.

The TCS-led consortium submitted its bid last year for the deployment of BSNL’s 4G network across four operating zones.

In December 2022, the domestic telecom stack underwent testing to handle 10 million concurrent mobile phone calls for the BSNL 4G network.

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