Corruption & MTNL’s doddering network

On July 29, 2015 Ravi Shankar Prasad, Telecom & IT minister made a statement in the Lok Sabha blaming Nokia for non-submission of security compliance for the delay in MTNL’s award of Rs 1,139 crore GSM contract.

He said, “MTNL has planned to add 1080 number of 3G sites and 800 number of 2G sites in Delhi and 1080 number of 3G and 566 number of 2G sites in Mumbai in its GSM network. The data handling capacity of network will be upgraded to the speed of 10 Gbps in Delhi and Mumbai. MTNL placed an Advance Purchase Order (APO) on 04.03.2015 on M/s Nokia Solutions and Networks India Ltd. In response, the vendor has not accepted the security clause in the APO. MTNL is yet to take a final decision in the matter.”