Three firms interested to offer 4G core network service to NT
Kathmandu, January 8
Three firms have applied to offer Long Term Evolution (LTE)/4G core network service to Nepal Telecom (NT).
According to NT officials, communication service providers ZTE, Huawei and Mavenir have expressed interest to provide LTE core network service to Nepal Telecom. NT had opened the bids submitted by these applicants at an event here today. However, NT is yet to award the contract to an eligible firm.
On November 3, NT had called for bids from interested companies for the supply, delivery, installation and commissioning of LTE/4G core network in different parts of the country.
“We have opened the bids today. We will now thoroughly analyse the proposal of each applicant firm before awarding the contract,” said Kamini Rajbhandari, managing director of NT.
Though THT could not verify the project cost that the three applicants have mentioned in their proposals, sources informed that ZTE has proposed to give LTE core network service to NT at $15.36 million.
Similarly, Huawei and Mavenir have proposed to provide the service at $38 million and $21 million, respectively.
Meanwhile, Huawei has also floated a second option, in which it has proposed to simply upgrade NT's current infrastructure for providing 4G core network service at $9.9 million, the source added.
