State run PSU Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) GSM Mobile Network is Oversubscribed, this is not a golden line for BSNL but main cause of lagging behind in Subscriber base and Congestion during peak hours like DBH (Day Busy Hours) and NBH (Night Busy Hours). As per recent media report, BSNL has about 32% more subscribers on its GSM Network than its capacity, according to numbers given by the Ministry of State (MoS) Communications and information technology to the Parliament. Asked whether a capacity crunch in BSNL has impacted its growth, Ministry of State (MoS) Telecom and IT Milind Deora said "BSNL's total GSM subscriber capacity was 7.55 crore at the end of October. In comparison, it had 9.99 crore subscribers at the end of the same month". So Now comes the Billion dollar question, who is Culprit behind it that BSNL fail to fulfill its basic requirement to stay in Market. Is it BSNL Management or An Era old tenders process or our beloved Politicians or Corrupt practices. Who will look after a PSU with more than Rs. 25000 Crore Revenue who paid thousand Crores dividend to Govt. for years and now its going down exponentially towards bottom.
BSNL has been facing controversies and delays in purchasing new GSM equipment from the beginning of Mobile era due to allegations that the tender process was not fully up to the mark. Various vendors had complained about BSNL's purchasing process, even going to the courts to challenge disqualification of their bids etc.. BSNL used to be India's biggest telecom company, but a Political scenario, Ministers in Scams from long time, crippling shortage of equipment, poor marketing and "Beyond pure Sarkari" processes full of Papers and files in era of ERP have seen its mobile services lose market share to roughly just 11% when small Private operators raises their market share. BSNL's procurement tends to be slow and lumbering as purchase orders, which are often worth several hundred million dollars, sometimes go all the way up to the Central minister for final approval. Due to the size of the orders, equipment makers who are disqualified from the bidding process for various reasons such as not having enough domestic capacity etc., challenge the decision in courts, and the process is held up for months. BSNL has been trying to buy equipment for the past many years but has remained unsuccessful due to some controversy or the other. The PSU operator reverted to the traditional system of buying through a single bid process, from its earlier suggested process of conducting a 3G type reverse bidding for selecting the lowest bidder. The committee set up under Sam Pitroda for the recovery of BSNL's fortunes had also suggested the auction method for buying equipment. BSNL got ONLY good news in years after Chines vendor ZTE and Huawei have emerged as the lowest bidder to bag the BSNL's GSM expansion contract of 14.37 million lines tender. For the entire three zones, ZTE and Huawei have emerged as the L1 and L2 bidders with Rs 4,300 and Rs 6,200 as the quoted tender amount while Fourth Zone is reserved for ITI as per media reports.
BSNL has been facing controversies and delays in purchasing new GSM equipment from the beginning of Mobile era due to allegations that the tender process was not fully up to the mark. Various vendors had complained about BSNL's purchasing process, even going to the courts to challenge disqualification of their bids etc.. BSNL used to be India's biggest telecom company, but a Political scenario, Ministers in Scams from long time, crippling shortage of equipment, poor marketing and "Beyond pure Sarkari" processes full of Papers and files in era of ERP have seen its mobile services lose market share to roughly just 11% when small Private operators raises their market share. BSNL's procurement tends to be slow and lumbering as purchase orders, which are often worth several hundred million dollars, sometimes go all the way up to the Central minister for final approval. Due to the size of the orders, equipment makers who are disqualified from the bidding process for various reasons such as not having enough domestic capacity etc., challenge the decision in courts, and the process is held up for months. BSNL has been trying to buy equipment for the past many years but has remained unsuccessful due to some controversy or the other. The PSU operator reverted to the traditional system of buying through a single bid process, from its earlier suggested process of conducting a 3G type reverse bidding for selecting the lowest bidder. The committee set up under Sam Pitroda for the recovery of BSNL's fortunes had also suggested the auction method for buying equipment. BSNL got ONLY good news in years after Chines vendor ZTE and Huawei have emerged as the lowest bidder to bag the BSNL's GSM expansion contract of 14.37 million lines tender. For the entire three zones, ZTE and Huawei have emerged as the L1 and L2 bidders with Rs 4,300 and Rs 6,200 as the quoted tender amount while Fourth Zone is reserved for ITI as per media reports.
