ZTE beats Huawei for BSNL tie-up

Posted on | December 5, 2005 |

Telecom vendor Huawei Technologies has lost out to another Chinese equipment vendor, ZTE Corporation, in the race to form a 50:50 joint venture with BSNL for manufacturing CDMA mobile handsets and fixed wireless terminals. The deal would involve technology transfer as well as transfer of machinery.

To begin with, the JV would include the manufacture of a million CDMA-based mobile handsets and an equal number of fixed wireless telephones (FWTs). Company executives confirmed that the JV would initially manufacture from BSNL’s unit in Kolkata.

Losing the BSNL deal is yet another setback to the India operations of Huawei. Last month, BSNL had cancelled Huawei’s contract to supply 1.05 million CDMA lines, which it had bagged it in partnership with HFCL and SCL.

The PSU then approached ZTE, as it had quoted the second best price (L2) for the CDMA project, but the latter declined the offer and said that it would not be able to match the price quoted by Huawei.

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