The Slow Death Of BSNL

BSNL does a U-turn on buying GSM gear through auction:

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd has scrapped plans to buy GSM equipment through a 3G-like reverse auction process . The company has instead floated a revised tender with the old system wherein vendors quoting the lowest amount will be selected. 

Though the bids will be made online, the telecom major has done a U-turn on its earlier plan to allow equipment vendors to revise its offer through a reverse auction mechanism.

... BSNL insiders suspect that the change may have happened at the request of some of the equipment vendors which feared that a reverse auction could lead to aggressive price cuts by the Chinese players. “In a reverse auction, the vendor with deep pockets and good financing back up, stand to gain as they would be able to cut down on price. While this is good for BSNL in terms of getting the best price it may edge out some of the bigger European vendors out of the play,” said a market watcher.

...BSNL workers' union, meanwhile, has shot off a letter to the Communications and IT Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, on the issue. 

“The present tender for procurement of 14.37 million GSM lines through e-tendering could not reach anywhere for the last more than a year, due to sheer incompetence and extremely poor decision-making capabilities. In the meantime, it decided to float new tender, scrapping auction mechanism. This is simply atrocious, fully exposing professional integrity, very poor understanding on part of management and to top it all its total lack of concern as far as revival of BSNL is concerned,” said Mr G.L. Jogi, General Secretary, Sanchar Nigam Executives Association, in a letter sent to the Minister in October.

Why would the government let this kind of thing continue unless they want to kill off BSNL?  Pathetic morons.  Nice work by the European vendors too.  Nice to watch Capitalism at work.

Broadband To The Villages

Not sure what to make of this: Special purpose vehicle planned for broadband push.  

Revolving Door Between BSNL, Private Telcoms

I asked last month if the aim of the people in charge was to ruin BSNL to the advantage of private telcoms.  That post was about how BSNL was being made to pay hiked spectrum charges as well as higher licence fees too, while the private players were exempted.  Last week, DoT rejected BSNL's plea to level the playing field: Licence fee: DoT rejects BSNL plea for level field.

Related is this : Union fears nexus between BSNL officers, telcos; seeks probe.  The famous revolving-door problem.  

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd's employees' union has sought a probe into the possibility of a nexus between some officers with private telecom operators to stall the PSU's roll-out plans. This comes after the Government last month hauled up two former BSNL officers for taking up a job with a private telecom company post-retirement without taking approvals.

In a letter to the Cabinet Secretary, the Sanchar Nigam Executive Association (SNEA) said that one of the main reasons for the present state of serious crisis in BSNL is that a good number of officers belonging to top level management and closely involved in taking strategic and critical policy decisions have been on the pay rolls of service providers and vendors. “The modus operandi of such an unholy and unscrupulous nexus is carefully calibrated and the mechanism of its detection is so feeble that hardly anyone is brought to book. But, the fact of the matter remains that a large numbers of officers of top management of BSNL, particularly at the board/CGM level, develop a very close nexus with service providers, while in active job, and, immediately, after their retirement, joins them as consultants,” said Mr G.L. Jogi, General Secretary, SNEA.

Recently, the Government issued an order against Mr Satya Pal Kalsi, former Chief General Manager, BSNL (UP east) and Mr Shabbir Ahmed, former Director BSNL, for undertaking commercial employment with Reliance post their retirement in 2003 without obtaining permission.