Motorola, ZTE disqualified on technical grounds: BSNL

State-owned telecom firm BSNL said on Thursday that Motorola and ZTE were disqualified from the tender for setting up over 45 million cellular line infrastructure on technical grounds.

Top BSNL officials said that the two companies, of which Motorola has moved the Delhi High Court against the disqualification, did not meet various technical requirements.

"One of the reasons was that the tender conditions required prospective vendors for experience of (setting up) 20 million GSM lines, which Motorola did not have.

So the tender evaluation committee disqualified them," said BSNL finance director SD Saxena at a press conference on Thursday to announce the reduction in STD call rates.

Saxena declined to go into greater details saying the matter was in the court. He, however, said Motorola and ZTE were not disqualified because of the China connection and any security concerns, as reported in the media.

"We still do business with companies like ZTE," he added. ZTE is a Chinese firm. Motorola, on the other hand, is a US firm but does not make telecom switches.