TCS-led consortium bags BSNL’s ₹15,000cr 4G order

Bengaluru: A consortium led by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has won a contract for over Rs 15,000 crore from BSNL for deploying 4G networks across India. It’s one of the biggest domestic IT services deals so far. Its other consortium partners include Tata Group’s domestic gear company Tejas Networks, which will supply radio access networks (RAN) equipment, and C-DOT. Tejas had said it’s participating in BSNL’s proof-of-concept for 4G tender using RAN in last year’s earnings presentation. Pareekh Jain, CEO and lead analyst at Pareekh Consulting, and information platform EIIR Trend, said the TCS-BSNL deal will be the biggest domestic IT services deal. “This is still a 4G deal and will have further upside potential when BSNL goes for 5G,” they said.Jain, however, said there could be concerns on the margin front. TCS counts other telecom players such as Telenor, BT, Telstra, and Australia’s The National Broadband Network among its key customers.A case study on BSNL on the TCS website showed that the Indian telecom giant struggled to offer more than 97% system availability. Having 258 servers and 45 databases, with over 10TB of data each, managing the increasing complexity and criticality of its four zonal data centres was becoming challenging. TCS created a health monitoring portal to keep track of the status of each component of the data centre in real-time. “We measured nearly 30 distinct parameters and key performance indicators for each application, database, and operating system, with the option for further customisations,” TCS said.