ITI wins much awaited ASCON Phase IV

Much awaited from last two years on the project ASCON (Army Static Switched Communication Network) Phase IV project ,ITI wins the race by defeating other competitors RailTel, BEL (Bharat Electronics Ltd.) and Sterlite( A question arises on why Sterlite has with-drawn from the tender, which was about to announce).

ASCON Phase IV is digital secure backbone network of Indian Army and in the financial bid, ITI was L1 at Rs. 6,900 crore, RailTel was L2 at Rs. 7,900 crore and BEL was L3 at Rs. 12,000 crore.A question remains unanswered on after Sterlite qualified in the technical bid, why it didn’t participate in the financial bid.   

ASCON (Army Static Switched Communication Network ) ASCON is the digital secure backbone network of Indian Army for supporting and providing voice, video and data services to Indian Army. ASCON is a project of national importance being executed in phases under the Ministry of Defence (MoD). ASCON Phase IV covers, Northern, Western, Central, North Eastern and Southern regions of India as well as some stations in the hinterland. ASCON Phase IV includes planning, installation, commissioning, testing, optimization, operation, maintenance and training of Multiprotocol Next Generation Network (NGN), ASCON Phase IV is based on IP/MPLS over an optical DWDM backbone, secured using next generation GigE Bulk Encryption Units (BEUs), duly approved by Scientific Advisory Group (SAG), with end to end operation.

Phase IV turnkey order from defence forces will be in continuation with Phase I, II and III of ASCON which has been established in the last 25 years and is being maintained by ITI till date. The Phase IV project includes: Civil work, electronics, communications and satellite network.

What was the bid price of ASCON Phase IV :

L1 – ITI – Rs. 6,900 Cr 

L2 – RailTel – Rs. 7,900 Cr 

L3 – BEL – Rs 12,000 Cr 

Sterlite – Didn’t participate in financial bid 

The ASCON Phase IV is a Pan-India turnkey project and includes: rollout of a highly resilient exclusive 24 fibre, Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) based optical backbone network comprising almost 300 locations spanning over a distance of approximately 10,000 kms. This would entail procurement, trenching, laying, testing and maintenance of OFC, in a topology managed by GIS based optical fibre Network Management System (NMS).

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