The government has decided to keep away foreign companies from participating in a massive telecommunications contract for which it has set aside nearly Rs 21,000 crore.
The contract, to supply and implement the National Optical Fiber Network which will connect 250,000 panchayats in the country to optic fiber based broadband.
The Economic Times Reports: Erricsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Alcatel- Lucent, Huawei and ZTE are missing from the telecom department certified list of vendors eligible to supply Gigabit Passive Optical Network, which is the chosen fiber technology for this project.
India has made 100 % domestic sourcing mandatory for the project and the list of approved vendors include Himachal Futuristic Communications, ITI, Tejas Networks, C-DoT, VMC Systems, Prithvi Infosystems, Sai Systems, United Telecoms and SM Creative, the report said.
In November, the Indian government said that according to the report of permanent select committee on intelligence of the US titled “Investigative Report on US National security issues posed by Chinese Telecommunications Companies Huawei & ZTE,” potential threats exist in telecom networks irrespective of the sources like telecom gear manufactured in China or supplied by some other vendors.
Following this, the government issued guidelines to be followed before inducting telecom equipment into its network. The government has also set up a framework to deal with “potential threats” by the induction of Chinese telecom equipment.
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