Huawei bids lowest in tender for BTCL's 5G project
ZTE Corporation and its Bangladesh arm was the second-lowest bidder, offering a price of Tk415cr
After overcoming a series of challenges, including a potential cancellation and months of delays, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Company Ltd (BTCL) finally opened the tender box for its Tk463 crore project to build a nationwide 5G infrastructure on Wednesday.
Huawei International PPE Ltd and Huawei Technologies (Bangladesh) Ltd jointly submitted the lowest bid of Tk326 crore, allowing the BTCL to save Tk137 crore from the estimated cost, according to BTCL sources.
The second lowest bidder, another Chinese network infrastructure player ZTE Corporation and its Bangladesh arm together offered a price of Tk415 crore.
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The third bidder, Finish Nokia and homegrown Smart Technologies jointly offered a price of Tk579 crore, said sources.
Project Director Monjir Ahmed told The Business Standard, "The three bidders who qualified in technical evaluation earlier were taken into consideration and today [Wednesday] our committee unboxed their commercial bids."
He, however, refrained from divulging the bid amounts of the three participants.
BTCL Managing Director (Additional Charge) Md Anwar Hossain said the financial evaluation committee would examine their offers and their recommendation would be placed before the state-owned firm's board of directors.
Two years ago, the BTCL set the goal of connecting all upazilas in Bangladesh with 5G service by 2023. In February 2022, the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) approved a Tk1,059.10 crore project for enhancing BTCL's optical fibre transmission network.
The project would enable the BTCL to connect upazilas with 100 Gigabit per second (Gbps) fibre optic cable connections, which would be 300 Gbps for district towns and up to 1,000 Gbps for the cities.
Complexities in the tendering process
The "Tender of Supply Installation, Testing and Commissioning of ASON-based DWDM Transmission System on Turn-key Basis" was the largest one under the infrastructure development for nationwide 5-G readiness.
Former BTCL Managing Director Asaduzzaman Chowdhury, who was temporarily suspended by the Posts and Telecommunications Division on 7 November, was found by the Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) and the parent ministry to have been unlawfully disrupting the tender process that caused a delay of seven months to open the bids.
The CPTU's review, following a tender bidder's complaint earlier this year, found that Asaduzzaman violated several rules as the head of the procuring entity.
Asaduzzaman acted beyond his jurisdiction, violated the BTCL board of directors' prescriptions for following the Public Procurement Act and there had been mala fide intention, according to the suspension letter.
Despite technical committee clearance to the three bidders, Asaduzzaman Chowdhury was unlawfully attempting to cancel the entire tender the BTCL invited a year ago.
After the CPTU panel ordered to open the tender box to learn about the financial offers, a writ petition was filed with the High Court in October that resulted in a 15-day stay order on the CPTU review panel order.
The tender box was opened on Wednesday after a chamber judge of the Supreme Court stayed the High Court order, clearing ways for opening the tender.
According to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, the country will need 37,500 Gbps internet bandwidth by 2030 and the BTCL as per plan would provide 30% of that or 11,250 Gbps.
