Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Monday announced that it has won an advance purchase order from telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) for the deployment of a 4G network across India. “The consortium led by Tata Consultancy Services Limited has received an Advance Purchase Order valued over Rs 15,000 crore from BSNL, a 100% Govt. of India owned Public Sector Undertaking, for the deployment of a 4G network across India,” it said in a regulatory filing.
Tejas Networks Ltd is a part of the TCS-led consortium that bagged the BSNL pan-India 4G project. BSNL has issued Advance Purchase Order (APO) to TCS as well as ITI for this project. Tejas Networks will supply and service the Radio Access Networks (RAN) equipment. “Initial supplies and deployment are expected to be completed within the next 18 months,” Tejas Networks said in an exchange filing. Tejas Networks is an optical, broadband and data networking products company. The company designs, develops and sells its products to telecom service providers, internet service providers, utilities, security and government entities in 75 countries.
Earlier IT and Telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had said that the 4G infrastructure deployed by BSNL would be enhanced to 5G. India’s private telecom companies had begun rolling out 4G services on a large scale in 2016 and 5G was launched later in September 2022 with Reliance Jio and Airtel providing services across the country.
In April, TCS had reported its fiscal fourth quarter net profit at Rs 11,392 crore, up 5 per cent from the previous quarter. TCS revenue was at Rs 59,162 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter, rising just about 1.6 per cent from the previous quarter’s Rs 58,229 crore. Operating margin for the quarter was at 24.5 per cent and the net margin was at 19.3 per cent. Tejas Networks had also announced its fiscal fourth quarter with revenue at Rs 299.3 crore, up 136.6 per cent on-year. Loss after tax was Rs 11.5 crore as compared to loss of Rs 49.6 crore for the corresponding previous period.
