State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), the largest phone company in India has issued a contract seeking bids for the supply of 45.5 million GSM lines in the next 3 years. Another 14.5 million lines will be delivered by public sector ITI in collaboration with French company Alcatel. The deployment will happen in 3 phases with BSNL insisting that the successful vendors will have manufacturing units in India for the 2nd and 3rd phases. The company has said that it will allow Chinese vendors to bid for projects, including Huwawei Technologies, which has defaulted on the CDMA offering and also blacklisted by Indian intelligence agencies as a company that may compromise national security because of its links with the Chinese army.