Last month, state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) added close to 2 million new mobile subscribers. The monthly mobile subscriber additions at BSNL should rise substantially over the next few months. That's because US-based Motorola has withdrawn the case it filed six months ago challenging its disqualification from BSNL's $ 5 billion tender for 63 million mobile lines.
Now, the two lowest bidders--Sweden-based Ericsson and Finland's Nokia will roll-out the 45 million lines. An 18 million line contract has already been awarded to France's Alcatel that has a technology sharing agreement with state-owned ITI. Ericsson will roll-out 60% of the 45 million lines, while the balance goes to Nokia.
Motorola officials claim that they withdrew the case simply because it was hurting the consumer. Plus it wanted to retain a good relationship with BSNL. Obviously, its not as simple as that. Motorola officials were not surprisingly unwilling to comment whether there was any other reason behind the sudden change in stance.
BSNL, currently the third largest mobile operator will soon be in a position to threaten the top two mobile operators--Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications. As of end-March, Bharti leads with 37.14 million subscribers followed by Reliance with 33.82 million. BSNL has 27.42 million. That ranking could change substantially by the year-end. That will be the immediate fallout of Motorola withdrawing the case.
BSNL is India's largest telecom company with a presence in 21 of the 23 circles. It is not present in Delhi and Mumbai, where the other state-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) is present.
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