CHENNAI: The state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) will invite bids for adding 60 million GSM lines envisaging an investment of over $4.5 billion (about Rs. 20,000 crore), the Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Dayanidhi Maran, announced on Friday.

Mr. Maran said India was witnessing a record growth in the addition of subscribers in the last few months and this needed to be continuously fuelled. The public sector companies BSNL and MTNL were extremely aggressive. BSNL would float a tender for adding 60 million lines in the first week of March, he said.

ITI to get a slice

Mr. Maran, who was in Chennai to inaugurate Ericsson's R&D facility and global services delivery centre, said that of the 60 million lines, orders for 30 per cent (18 million lines) would go to public sector equipment supplier ITI, which had a technical tie-up with French equipment manufacturer Alcatel, under the reserve quota.

Complimenting the two telecommunication PSUs for announcing One-India tariff plans, enabling subscribers to make domestic long distance calls (STD) throughout the country for just one rupee a minute, the Minister said, "wait for March 1, more than 90 per cent of the telecom operators or, may be all, will join the bandwagon and announce similar tariff plans."

Mr. Maran said the Indian telecom market was growing rapidly. From a 4.7-million-strong new subscriber base last December, it had gone up to touch 5.3 million new subscribers in January this year.

Exuding confidence about reaching the targeted 250 million-subscriber base by 2007, he said that every month, 1.75 million new subscribers were being added and this was one sector that would overtake China. The Minister urged Ericsson to consider setting up a manufacturing facility in Chennai soon, as the Prime Ministers of India and Finland were slated to inaugurate Nokia's new plant at Sriperumbudur near Chennai on March 11.

Pointing to the presence of many multinationals in the Sriperumbudur area, Mr. Maran cited the creation of a proper eco-system as the reason for leading companies to consider investments there.

Foxconn's four projects

The Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., which is also known as Foxconn and is a manufacturer of connectors and cable assemblies, has decided to invest $110 million in the coming five years to build several manufacturing facilities in Tamil Nadu. These facilities will provide vertical integration solutions as a part of its global electronic manufacturing services, said Mr. Maran.

The Minister said the Chief Executive Officer of Foxconn, Terry Gou, would be in Chennai on March 3 for signing a memorandum of understanding with the Government for setting up these facilities.

These facilities would eventually create more than 10,000 job opportunities.

Foxconn's four investment projects included manufacture of mobile handsets and other components at an existing building on a lease basis; manufacture of mobile handsets and other components at Nokia SEZ on purchase-to-build basis; development of an electronic hardware and related services special economic zone; and manufacturing PCB, PCBA, mobile handsets, PC and network components, system integration and other electronic hardware at SEZ.

Mr. Maran said an electronic hardware and services special economic zone would be set up jointly with State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd (SIPCOT) and Motorola and it would be named as Sriperumpudur Hi-Tech Innovation Park SEZ. The Minister said the U.S-based semi-conductor company, IEMC, had evinced interest in setting up its manufacturing facility in South India.

He said three states, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, were in the race to bag the $3 billion facility.

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