TCS Bags Rs. 15,000-Crore Purchase Order From BSNL to Deploy 4G Network Across India

Tata Consultancy Services on Monday said a consortium, led by the IT giant, received an advance purchase order valued over Rs. 15,000 crore from the state-run BSNL for the deployment of a fourth-generation mobile (4G) network across India.

This comes at a time when Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are ramping up their infrastructure of 5G technology across the country.

State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) on April 22 launched 4G services in pilot mode in parts of Punjab in a run-up to a formal rollout of 4G services. The company has started live testing of its 4G services with 135 tower sites using an indigenous telecom stack.

According to a statement from Tata Group's Tejas Networks Limited released on April 3, it received an order worth Rs. 696 crore from BSNL for the upgradation of its all-India IP-MPLS based Access and Aggregation Network (MAAN).

Tejas Networks, part of the Tata Group, designs and manufactures wireless networking products for telecommunications service providers, defence and government entities in over 75 countries. As a part of this contract, Tejas Networks will supply, install and commission over 13,000 of its 'TJ1400' series of next-generation access and aggregation routers.

Initial supplies and deployment are expected to be completed within the next 18 months, Tejas Networks said in an exchange filing on Monday.

Tejas Networks is an optical, broadband and data networking products company based in India. The company designs develops and sells its products to telecom service providers, internet service providers, utilities, security and government entities in 75 countries.

The shares of TCS were trading 0.70 percent up at Rs. 3,245.05 apiece in morning trade, on Monday.

The shares of Tejas Networks were trading 0.97 percent up at Rs. 648.20 apiece on BSE in morning trade on Monday.