According to reports in foreign media, BSNL, the state-owned telecom operator in India, has banned the Chinese telecom equipment makers Huawei and ZTE from the bidding for the GSM projects in the northern and eastern zones in India.
Kuldeep Goyal, chairman of BSNL, said that compared with Chinese-made equipment, those made by Western European manufacturers are more expensive. However, according to the requirements of the government, the company should not order equipment from Chinese makers, especially for projects in key areas.
Goyal also revealed that after Huawei and ZTE are excluded, the three participants left in the bidding are Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Alcatel-Lucent.
Recently, India's Department of Telecom rejected Indian telecom operators' applications for the purchase of Chinese telecom equipment many times and the reason was reportedly for national security. The department even announced in April 2010 that it formally bans Indian mobile operators from importing telecom equipment manufactured by Chinese companies. As the two largest Chinese telecom equipment suppliers in the Indian market, Huawei and ZTE are the major victims of the ban.
Huawei already said that the company is willing to open the source code of its network system to the Indian government to eliminate the security concerns of the government.