In a move which may significantly hurt Huawei’s financial achievements from the Indian market for this year, BSNL has scrapped the 20 million contract awarded to Huawei as part of its mega-GSM tender, reports news agency, PTI.

The report says that the contract has been cancelled by the PSU since Huawei has now come up with certain conditions for supplying the equipment. There is no official comment from the concerned players on this issue. Recently BSNL CMD Kuldeep Goyal had stated that the company had already placed an order for 8 million line to Huawei

The report quotes its source said that BSNL had placed the order for Southern Zone after detailed negotiations with Huawei and hence there was no question of accepting the conditions.

If true the move reflects that BSNL indeed has been the lost party in its mega-GSM deal especially after critics warned that the PSU should have selected multiple vendors for each of its four zones. The recent developments suggest that shortlisted players may have had an upper hand while negotiating with the PSU over commercial aspects of the deal.

For Northern and Eastern regions the company is still in talks with Ericsson over price. There is no player shortlisted for the Western region.

DoT has suggested to BSNL to go for a quick re-tendering. But this move is strongly opposed by the company’s Union.

BSNL’s GSM tenders in the recent years have always turned up serving little purpose to the growth of the operator. The earlier 45 million GSM tender was also marked with controversies and had to be halved instead of going for a re-tender. Following this the PSU came up with the 93 million GSM tender which also includes a good quantum of 3G lines.

Private operators meanwhile have raced ahead of the PSU during this time in terms of market share.