BSNL has defied advice from the Home Ministry and the Defence Ministry as the company went ahead and opened the bids with Ericsson and Huawei indeed emerging shortlisted players for the contract.

Incidentally Huawei has emerged as the short listed player for the southern region, a region where it is already working as a partner for BSNL.  Ericsson has bagged rights for North and East regions. BSNL is yet to open the bids for the Western part.

BSNL claims it has secured necessary clearances from the agencies except for Western region before opening the bids. This however leaves one wondering if views of Home Ministry and Defence Ministry come under the category of ''necessary clearances' 

BSNL's process however is marred by growing speculation and discontent within industry players especially the left out vendors who are now complaining about the lack of transparency in the selection process.

And they have reasons to believe so. To start with vendors find it hard to believe that they failed to meet the technical requirements of the project. The general perception was that most of the vendors will meet the technical requirements and the differentiator will be in the pricing bids. But with only two vendors meeting the technical specifications and in most of the zones only one vendor left in fray, pricing has become irrelevant.

Ericsson had submitted bids only for North and East, incidentally the regions where it has emerged as the qualified bidder. Huawei had submitted bids for West, East and South. It has bagged rights for South and is in fray for West. For NSN which had qualified in the earlier tender floated by BSNL, the fact that it has been rejected on technical grounds may be hard to believe. ZTE was the only company which had submitted bids for all the zones.

It maybe remembered that Motorola had been disqualified on technical grounds in BSNL's earlier tender. The company had challenged the decision in court but ultimately gave up the fight and accepted BSNL's rejection. Motorola did not participate in the current tender.

Additionally, it appears more than incidental that BSNL's decision of allowing vendors without a manufacturing facility in India to have paid-off with selection of Huawei. It maybe remembered that BSNL had allowed vendors without a manufacturing base in India to participate in the bid. Huawei was the only company to be benefited out of this clause since it allowed the firm to participate in the project. One can only symphatise for those with manufacturing facilities in India and who have invested lot of financial resources as well as contributed to research and development in communications field in India and yet failing to meet the mark of BSNL's technical requirements. These same vendors provide communication solutions to world class operators across the globe who are much bigger in size as compared to BSNL and offer much advanced services.

Another fact to make the things more 'incidental' is that the DoT had stated a day before the bids were opened by BSNL that the firm should be given an independent hand and government agencies should not intervene in its decision-making process.

Incidentally Huawei is also reported to be front runner for BSNL's WiMAX project.

BSNL meanwhile will have less ground when it comes to negotiating with the short listed vendors as in some zones there is only one vendor and hence no competition. This however is not incidental and in fact is ironical for the firm which was expecting to benefit out of the competition in the tender project.