Bangladesh Telecommunication Company (BTCL) has allegedly moved to float a tender targeting US-based venture for a project named “Establishing External Telecommunication Network for Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant’ .

Under this project Package: GD-1, Lot: B specifications is nearly finalised ‘meticulously’ to provide further benefits financially to a single tech giant USA based company.

Main scope of this project is established external Telcom network which will further integrated on Russian finances Rooppur Neuclar power plant core network.

This kind of USA solution backed Network design will be totally backfired as the guideline of American treasury department stated clearly that “USA Technology totally prohibits to supply any solution in Russian foundation direct/donated Infrastructure”. So, after purchasing this kind of high capital IT Infrastructure total people’s money will be wasted a source said.

Recently, the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) bounced back the revised proposal of the project titled ‘Establishing a telecommunication network for the Rooppur Nuclear Project’ recently. Ministry of Science and Technology forwarded the project through increasing cost around 91.05 percent.

But the state-owned telecom company is trying to move on procurement for supply, installation, testing and commissioning of telecommunication equipment under the project on Turnkey basis by January incorporating specific criteria to procure network equipment from single venture of US-based named “Cisco” as original equipment manufacturer.

The Mirror Asia has obtained document of project specification from a anonymous source mentioning single vendor names in the tender specification. “The equipment will mixed mix up with Cisco 90 percent and 10 percent with Juniper, (for eye wash)” read a document of project specification at Final stage.

BTCL aimed to launch the single company tender violating the public procurement rule (PPR). The nearly final specifications showed that Juniper proprietary line item where the router should support layer-7 security services for EVPN-VXLAN tunnel inspection with reference of apps.juniper.net and Cisco proprietary line item where router shall support end-to-end segmentation (VPNs), ZBFW, PKI, DNS Layer Security with reference of Cisco site.

“The exportation, deportation, sale, or supply, directly or indirectly, from the United States, or by a United States person, wherever located, of IT consultancy and design services or of IT support services or cloud-based services for Covered Software to any person located in the Russian Federation,” read a note of Department of Treasury on 12 December. Whether allowing this technology will further create a strict bottleneck in Rooppur Nuclear power plant or this is a smart move need analysis wisely.

Regarding the tender specifications backed by single source USA backed manufacturers, TMA approached to project director Shafiqur Rahman for comment, however, his phone found switched off.