TelecomLive April 2024

IDC operations by NxtGen www.telecomlive.com 7 TelecomLIVE April 2024 cooperate with vigilance also, they will not be able to assess the full financial loss to BSNL. Therefore, it is better that they refer the matter to the CBI once they complete the investigation as forensic audit of their NMS cannot be done by BSNL because of jurisdiction limitation. Here are the details. 2009-2016 On October 7, 2009, BSNL issued an EoI to Set up, Own and Operate Internet Data centers (IDCs) in BSNL (see box-A at pg 20-21). Only two Data Center Service Providers (DCSPs), quoting highest revenue share to BSNL, were to be selected for 10 cities. The EoI was for providing hosting (shared as well as dedicated), Co- location, and Managed Services. EoI had asked the bidders to submit year wise revenue share separately for Co-location services, and Hos t i ng se rv i ces wh i ch includedManaged services. As per EoI, it was mandatory for Data Center to have network connectivity, to end customers, from BSNL, and the revenues from bandwidth charges were to be retained completely by BSNL. EoI also had stated that BSNL will raise invoices to the end customers and it shall open an Escrow account for this purpose and all receipts from the customers shall go directly to this account and shall be split into two parts and credited to respective designated accounts of BSNL and DCSP in the specified proportion. The contract period was for five years, with sixth and seventh year being optional which could be renewed on yearly basis at the discretion of BSNL. After seven years also, contract could be extended on yearly basis on mutually agreed terms and condi- tions. In the EoI, no upper limit was specified on such number of extensions. In this EoI process, Dimension Data India Pvt Ltd emerged as the H1 bidder and got six IDC sites, while CtrlS turned out to be the H2 bidder and got four IDC sites, at H1 rates. In 2010, BSNL awarded them the contracts. The revenue share was 20 per cent for BSNL and 80 per cent forDCSPs. However, in 2016, Dimension Data transferred its assets related to all six IDCs of BSNL to NxtGen Datacenter & Cloud Technologies Pvt Ltd along with the business shared with BSNL, for about Rs 6.50 crore, out of which 50 per cent was paid immediately and the balance was to be paid in two installments. But, NxtGen did not pay the balance. Dimension Data, referred the case to CVO, BSNL, wh i ch in turn referred the case to vigilance wing of BSNL Madhya Pradesh circle. Vigilance of M P c i r c l e a n a l y s e d t h e reports in detail and found much larger extent of u n - b i l l e d customers that too with period extending to the year 2017. They h a v e a l s o questioned the c o n c e r n e d officers why they did not insist that the cus tomers place the order on BSNL, instead of letting NxtGen take the orders in its name. These facts are revealed i n t h e l e t t e r s a d d r e s s e d t o Suhas Mankar of BSNL MH, extracts of which are scanned as scan-1 below & 2 at Pg 8 to 19. Since NxtGen is unlikely to Scan-1: Vigilance questions dated October 18, 2023 to Suhas Mankar, GM (IT-BP), BSNL MH