India Post rejects Cisco’s IT upgradation equipment

India's postal department has rejected the bids of four companies - HCL Comnet, Wipro, Dimension Data and UTL - to build an IT network that connects 30,000 post offices across the country, citing the 'obsolete equipment' being provided by Cisco, the technology partner for these bidders. 

After the disqualifications, the department has shortlisted HP, IBM, TCS and Sify for its Rs 1,300-crore project aimed at modernisation of the IT infrastructure of postoffices, two officials with direct knowledge of the development has said. All these companies have opted for a combination of Juniper and HP to be their technological and hardware partners for the project. Cisco is the world's largest company in networking equipment, such as routers, and customer premise equipment. 

The contract will be awarded after the financial bids of these companies are examined . But the project could run into a hurdle as Cisco has approached the Communication & IT ministry against the rejection of bids of companies partnering with it. 

It is also learnt that Cisco has besieged the postal department not to open the financial bids of the shortlisted companies until its concerns are addressed. Cisco denied to comment on a detailed questionnaire sent by ET. "As you would expect, several Cisco Partners participated in the RFP process. 

Any questions relating to that should be directed to the Department of Post," a Cisco India spokesperson said. Department of Post officials who evaluated the bids said companies partnering with Cisco were rejected for three primary reasons. 

"As per Cisco's own public announcement in November 2010, a significant majority of the routers and switches it plans to supply its partners for this project, has reached their end-of-life. The manufacturing of these products would stop by 2012-end, the period when we will be awarding the contract. 

Besides, the software updates for these products will also end within two more years," a top official said. This official also added that awarding the project to any company using Cisco hardware would compromise a key requirement of the project being scalable in the future due to obsolete equipment. Cisco has not yet replied to the allegations. Another official in the postal department explained that all bidders partnering Cisco had submitted an undertaking from the IT hardware major that it would support these products for seven years.