By Zia Askari
The Department of Posts has awarded its prestigious Rural Hardware tender to TCIL and Ricoh India
As India’s Department of Posts or DoP is set to engage itself in a modernization exercise, the organization has awarded its approximately Rs 2000 worth of Rural Hardware tender to TCIL (Telecommunications Consultants India Limited) and Ricoh India.
While there is no official confirmation from Ricoh India or TCIL, high ranking sources close to the development have confirmed that as part of the implementation of this project, TCIL will be undertaking the systems integration work while Ricoh is likely to provide the hardware part.
According to Department of Posts tender document, 2014_DOP_4660_1 the organization was looking for selection of hardware vendor for supply, installation and maintenance services of hardware, peripheral devices, OS and connectivity for rural ICT solution (RH).
As part of this implementation, DoP was looking at supply, installation and maintenance of the following Hardware (Rural ICT device along with the peripherals and accessories).
Handheld based Main Computing device (Hardware and Operating System), peripheral devices, 2D Imagers, thermal printer, biometric fingerprint scanner, digital cameras etc.
And as part of the tender, maintenance services would be provided for a period of 20 Quarters from the date of acceptance for the Rural ICT device.
SI partner would be responsible for coordination with the OEMs for installation, testing and commissioning of ICT devices, as well as coordination with network service provider for connectivity of the ICT device with the network.
Experts close to the industry claim that the overall worth of this tender would be more than Rs 2000 crore and system integrator would need to create their own winning combinations in order to enable national implementation on such a large scale.
“TCIL is known for its quality assurance and timely delivery of such large scale projects. This is one of the reasons why we were selected. Our past experience to handle such projects will help us to deliver great value on this project,” informed, a high ranking official from TCIL on conditions of anonymity.
It is important to note that a couple of years back, DoP came out with a similar tender for modernization of its workforce and Ahmedabad based Sai Info Systems emerged as the winner, however, it was not able to implement it because of the company running into bad weather.
