BSNL loses Ethiopian Tele deal bid
In yet another setback to its international expansion plans, Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) has lost the bid for managing telecom networks of the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corp (ETC), a state monopoly in the African nation.
“BSNL had bid aggressively for the contract, but lost to France Telecom,” sources familiar with the development told ET. They said although BSNL had made a financially better offer than France Tele, it did not qualify on some other criteria, including operational performance in the domestic market.
Also, Ethiopia has earlier worked with France in 1903 when its communications functions was under the Palace Administration. At that time, experts from France suggested that telephone, posts and telegraph should be organised under one ministry, which later became ETC. That seemed to have worked in favour of France Telecom, said sources.
BSNL had bid to manage ETC’s networks on behalf of the Ethiopian government, outline business growth strategies and manage the operations of the company.
BSNL CMD Kuldeep Goyal said the PSU could have made the lowest bid, but in the overall evaluation process, financial component was not the sole criteria. “We understand that other key elements of the evaluation process are equally important for the host country while shortlisting a bidder,” he told ET, but did not elaborate.
BSNL has been losing market share on its home turf to private operators as it struggles with red tapism. Its $10-billion tender for 93 million GSM lines has been put on hold, hurting its ability to expand and rope in subscribers.
