Nepal Telecom has confiscated Chinese vendor ZTE’s Bid bond worth 420 million NRs (2.5 % of the total bid amount) for the delay in making contract for the remaining 5.2 Million GSM lines of 10 Million GSM project. This has come almost a year of negotiation with ZTE and after no sign of inking a deal Nepal Telecom has taken the bold decision not to wait for ZTE any more, seizing the bid bond worth 4.6 M USD. Nepal Telecom’s board headed by Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communication also backed the decision and directed to ask third lowest Vendor Ericsson to make a deal.
Ericsson is the third vendor by least price to offer the 5.2 million GSM lines, the contract will be awarded to Huawei (second lowest in price) again if Ericsson won’t provide the deal in the same amount as bidded by Huawei. Earlier, Nepal Telecom had already signed a contract for 4.8 Million GSM lines including 3G+ (LTE) data services which is worth about 7 billion Nepali Rupees. So there is chance of Huawei ruling all over Nepal for the 10 Million GSM project in NT.
ZTE has recently signed a deal with Teliasonera owned operator Nepal Satellite Company (Hello Mobile brand) for their expansion. ZTE had been providing telecom equipments for GSM, CDMA, 3G to big companies like NTC and Ncell from their early project.
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