The Telecom Equipment Manufacturers’ Association (TEMA) of India has objected to the recent award of tender  to RADWIN by Education and Research Network (ERNET) relating to procurement of Ethernet based Radios for Point to Point  and Point to Multi-point communication network for 150 schools across the Districts of Jaipur and Ajmer, Rajasthan .
According to the communication to the Secretary Department of Information & Technology (IT), Government of India, J. Satyanarayana, TEMA has pointed out the discrepancies in the tendering process for the project in question. From the beginning itself, ERNET executives’ exercised bias towards a particular company by tweaking the specifications in their favour and the Domestic Manufacturers were put at a disadvantage. Subsequently, the evaluation process was not as stipulated in the Tender document and was also not transparent.Â
“However, to the best of our knowledge, RADWIN’s equipment was not TEC approved at the time of bidding. Also, the products were not field proven, as it was newly launched product by the Company at the time of tendering. This clearly indicates that the specifications of the Tender were tweaked so as to accommodate RADWIN in particular,” said Ashok K Aggarwal, Honorary Director General, TEMA.
The TEMA communication further pointed out that during 2011, it had sent six communications to the DG ERNET regarding the technical specifications framed by it (ERNET) which were more skewed towards the foreign vendors, particularly RADWIN.
