According to sources, previous precedents indicate that the order might be split up between all the three bidders, who will be given the option of providing the lines at the price of the L1 bidder, which is Rs 60,000 per line.

The cost of setting up telephone lines in rural areas is usually much higher than the cost for setting up urban lines, because for a rural line the capacity is much lesser; urban areas are more densely populated. Sources inform that in this particular tender, the line per cost has gone up because the capacity is only 500 subscribers per system.

Moreover, the tender was for 40 systems, wherein each system had one Base Station Controller (BSC) and one Base Transiever Station (BTS). "A BSC is more expensive than a BTS and can control up to 30 BTSs. If the capacity increases to 5,000 to 10,000 lines per system, price can come down drastically from the current level of Rs 60,000 per line," add sources.

This particular project, for which the bids were invited last year, is basically a pilot for setting up lines in some selected pockets in each circle. DoT has also invited tenders for a much bigger project of setting up 6 lakh fixed lines for rural telephpony, which will also be based on the CDMA technology.

The bids for the 6 lakh line project were invited four weeks ago. The last date of submission of the bids for this project, which was earlier given as July 27 in the tender document, has now been postponed to mid-August, since the initial time gap between the invitation of tender and submission was too short for a tender of this size.