Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) deal is likely to get a green flag in March from the Group of Ministers (GoM). TCS has been working on helping BSNL roll out homegrown 4G and realise the mission of the Indian government to build an Aatmanirbhar Bharat. While there have been delays, the deployment is expected to start happening in the second half of 2022. BSNL wants to start by deploying homegrown 4G tech in over 1 lakh sites across India. The board has already given its nod to go ahead with this, and now the telecom department just needs to get the nod of the GoM so that a purchase order can be issued.
The deal between BSNL and TCS is worth about $2.9 billion USD or close to Rs 25,000 crore. TCS is not working alone. TCS-owned Tejas Networks is actually taking care of the equipment manufacturing, and there's also the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) which is involved in the process. There are reports online that the deal would get the nod of GoM in March 2023, and then a purchase order would be issued to TCS.
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What's not clear at the moment is the status of the field trials. BSNL and TCS were yet to conduct field trials, and that had caused delays. Neither of the companies has issued a statement on the status of the field trials. According to an ET report, the deal between the two companies is worth Rs 24,556.37 crore, and the amount also includes network gear cost of about Rs 13,000 crore as well as third-party items and a 10-year annual maintenance contract (AMC).
The deal between the companies would see the deployment of 4G within 18 to 24 months across India from the time TCS gets the purchase order for the core equipment. This means that BSNL's 4G deployment would be finished somewhere around 2025 or 2026. This is just the deployment deal we are talking about with TCS.
