The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will bar the central government, state governments and public sector undertakings (PSUs) from procuring certain telecom equipment from telecom companies of countries that do not allow Indian telcos from participating in procurement of telecom equipment, according to an official order, dated February 19. The order comes after the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) had prepared a Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order 2017 to promote manufacturing and production of goods and services in India (more on that below). MediaNama has seen a copy of the order, and news agency PTI also reported on it. Here’s what the DoT order said: “… any foreign Government which is not allowing Indian suppliers to participate and/or compete in procurement of telecom equipment, provision of clause 10(d) of Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017 be invoked in relation to the aforesaid telecom items identified in para 4 herein above.” Equipment covered under the order: The telecom equipment that is covered under the DoT order has eight items, such as 2G/3G/4G/LTE modems, optical fibre, and routers: SDH/Carrier-Ethernet/MPLS- TP/Packet Optical Transport equipment/PTN/OTN systems Wireless/Wireline PABXs & IP PBX GPON/XGS-PON, NG-PON2 equipment (including ONT and OLT) CPE (including Wi-Fi Access points and Routers, Media Converters), 2G/3G/4G/LTE Modems Optical Fibre Cable DWDM/CWDM systems IP/MPLS Core routers/ Edge/ Enterprise Router Wi-Fi based broadband wireless access systems (Including Access Point, Aggregation Block, Core Block), Integrated Broadband system DoT said that the 8 items were shortlisted following consultations with the domestic…
