The committee set up by DoT to select a partner for the project is yet to meet after the deadline for submitting the revised bids by the three shortlisted contenders expired on August 10. The committee had, in the last week of May, shortlisted the bids of Cable & Wireless, Global One (a consortium comprising Deutsche Telekom, Sprint and France Telecom) and the British Telecom-MCI combine from a total of seven bids receive, sources said.

While shortlisting the three players, the committee had set a deadline of June 11 for the submission of revised bids. However, this deadline was met only by the BT-MCI consortium with the other two contenders failing to submit fresh bids.

However, one month after the June 11 deadline expired, the committee arbitrarily "extended" it by four weeks and asked Global One and Cable & Wireless to inform within one week if they were interested in submitting their revised bids or not.

It is understood that even after "extending" the deadline by four weeks to August 10, Global One and Cable & Wireless failed to submit their revised bids, in the process making the BT-MCI consortium as the sole bidder.

The regional hub plans to route all international telephone traffic originating from the South Asia region. However, a couple of months ago, DoT had disallowed the project from investing in any kind of infrastructure.

According to DoT, if the project invested in infrastructure, it would amount to breaking its monopoly on domestic long distance services, which has been assured to it till 1999 as per the National Telecom Policy of 1994.

The project was initially proposed to be a joint venture between VSNL, BT and MCI. However, after much controversy, DoT rejected the proposal and instead directed VSNL to invite bids from international telecom companies.

This considerably delayed VSNL's plans to set up the hub as it had to come out with with a request for proposal (RPF) inviting bids. By October 17, the last date for submitting the bids, only seven companies responded to the RPF with major names like AT&T and NTT of Japan deciding not to participate.

A few other major companies like Telstra of Australia and Teleglobe of Canada, however, participated in the process.