ST. PETERSBURG, Russia-The St. Petersburg-based Telecominvest holding said it decided to work with Finnish supplier Nokia Corp. instead of Germany’s Siemens AG to create a GSM-900 MHz network in North Caucasus.
Siemens originally won the tender for the Megaphone project, in which it competed with Alcatel Alsthom, L.M. Ericsson, Lucent Technologies Inc. and Nokia. However, Telecominvest said contract finalizing dragged on, thus making the Nokia tender proposal more profitable.
“From the technical point of view, the quality of equipment proposed by major producers is practically the same today. Therefore, the choice of a supplier was first and foremost based on such criteria as the time of delivery and financial terms,” said Alexei Nichiporenko, Telecominvest regional development division director.
“The process of finalizing the credit agreement with Siemens dragged on and we decided to finance the first part of the deal with our own funds. Thus, the Nokia proposal became more profitable at this stage,” he added.
However, Nichiporenko said Siemens confirmed it was ready to cooperate in other regions, which are to be covered by the Megaphone project. Those are the Volga region, Siberia and the Far East. Investments are expected to total $250 million in 2001-2002.
Siemens refrained from commenting on the issue.
The first stage of the North Caucasian project is to be launched into commercial operation in the end of 2001 and investment is estimated at $20 million. In two years, the network has to have three switchboards and 200 base stations.
Nokia has long-standing cooperation ties with Telecominvest and since 1994 has supplied four switchboards and some 400 base stations for the GSM carrier, the biggest in St. Petersburg.
