BSNL to invest Rs 4,500 cr for convergent billing system

MUMBAI: Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) will invest over Rs 4,500 crore for introducing a convergent billing system across India. The PSU telco is close to finalising the winner for what will be one of the world's largest tenders for billing systems.

IT giants Wipro Infotech, HCL Technologies, TCS, Satyam Computers and Tech Mahindra have qualified technical evaluation and financial evaluation is underway. The contract will be split between two players and the winners are likely to be announced next month, sources told ET.

"As the number of our subscribers as well as the variety of services being offered is increasing, we need the best billing systems to manage the user base. The convergent billing system is aimed at simplifying and streamlining procedures all over India," BSNL finance director S D Saxena said.

BSNL, the world's seventh largest telecom company, now has nearly 60m subscribers spanning across mobile, fixedline and broadband segments. The telco's legacy systems have resulted in multiple business support systems performing similar functions for each different product or service.

The next generation state-of-the-art Call Detail Record (CDR)-based customer care and convergent billing system will end multiplicity of functions. "The new system will be more than just convergent billing and will include call record management as well as fraud management," Mr Saxena added.

It will involve deployment of storage area networks (SAN) for billing systems. A data centre each will be set up in Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata and Chandigarh. The system will be implemented throughout India in BSNL's four zones and four data centres.

While the first phase of project implementation will involve an expenditure of around Rs 1200 crore, the second phase will guzzle the rest of the capex, said people familiar with the development.

The whole implementation process is likely to over an year while maintenance will be an ongoing exercise, they added.
MTNL had placed the order for a similar billing system in April last year.

The contract for MTNL, which offers services in the two circles of Mumbai and Delhi, was valued at Rs 425 crore. ORG Informatics, a system integrator in IT and telecom, had bagged the deal to supply, install, commission and maintain convergent billing and CRM system on turnkey basis for MTNL.

The winners of BSNL tender will conduct proof of concept (POC) at the twelve secondary switching areas (SSAs) of East and South Zones and eleven SSAs of West and North Zones. It will cover implementation of all the software solutions along with the networking components meant for the SSAs.

SSAs refers to sub-segments of a telecom circle. The roll out phase will involve rolling out the application and infrastructure stack for the system in the remaining SSAs of the four zones.

rashmi.pratap@timesgroup.com