DoT likely to bar Alphion India from supplying GPON systems

KOLKATA: The telecom department ( DoT) is likely to bar the Indian affiliate of US-based telecom gear maker Alphion Corp from supplying GPON systems for the communications ministry's 21,000-crore national broadband venture on the grounds that Alphion India does not manufacture such equipment locally.

The Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC), the technical wing of DoT, has dismissed Alphion India's claim of being a "domestic manufacturer" since it has outsourced manufacturing operations to Flextronics Technologies India Pvt Ltd (FTIPL), according to government documents reviewed by ET.

The move is seen as the first sign of India's insistence on domestic sourcing of security sensitive telecom products for government contracts in line with the new preferential market access (PMA) policy.

Alphion is a leading global supplier of Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) systems, which is the chosen fibre technology for the rollout of India's national fibre optic network, which will take high-speed internet to the hinterlands. In this case, domestic procurement rules are likely to be implemented more stringently since GPON systems have been tagged "security sensitive" by DoT and have to be 100% locally manufactured by next year.