The Indian Army has issued a Request For Information (RFI) seeking details of available Mobile Cellular Communication Systems (MCCS) based on Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) cellular communication systems technology for deployment in the ‘northern and northeastern regions of India’. The RFI, issued last month, invites vendors to submit information to display their capability to set up such networks, on a turnkey basis in areas that are ‘mostly hilly with rugged terrain and has forest cover in some parts’.
According to the RFI, ‘Typical regions for implementation of MCCS for the Indian Army’ include:
a. ‘Area bounded by locations – Tawang, Agia (near Bongaigaon), Shillong and Tezpur in the states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya’.
b. ‘Area bounded by locations – Dibrugarh, Phek, Champhai and Karimganj in the states of Assam, Nagaland, and Mizoram’.
c. ‘Area bounded by locations – Sonamarg, Loma, Leh, Partapur, Batalik, and Drass in the state of Jammu & Kashmir (Ladakh)’.
The army will, later, issue separate Requests For Proposal (RFP) for each MCCS region. In response to this RFI, vendors have been asked to analyze the area of coverage listed and arrive at solutions, assuming each geographical area would cater to 7,000 subscribers, ‘distributed uniformly’. The RFI prefers Base Stations to be fully transportable and the network to have the capability to integrate indigenously developed third-party security solutions in handsets.
The solution the army would like is one that would ‘support the existing numbering plan for army networks’ and also ‘be designed to operate in conditions of snow, heavy rainfall, high humidity as well extremes of temperatures’.
The RFI requires vendors to have ‘implemented a minimum of one cellular network in India’, and would like them to provide an early response.
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