Qualcomm fails TEC test

NEW DELHI, April 30: The plans of the Department of Telecommunications to commercially launch the Qualcomm system have run into rough weather with the Telecommunication Engineering Centre TEC refusing to issue type approval certificate for the instrument after identifying serious faults during field trial.

MTNL was planning to offer the WLL system on demand from next month. However sources in DoT say that Qualcomm phone equipment was to be commercially launched without even going through the regular bidding procedures. The TEC test report dated February 21, 1997 has noted that during field trial the system repeatedly failed to meet the specified standard regulations. The system was under trial with DoT for the last two years and repeatedly the Qualcomm failed to meet the test specifications. The unilateral trial order for the system of 1000 subscriber capacity has in the meanwhile threatening to blow up into a major scandal. These orders were placed without ensuring the TEC clearance. It is mandatory for the DoT to get TEC certificate before introducing any new system for commercial launch. And the purchase orders are to be placed normally through competitive bidding. The Qualcomm system has also been found to be uncompetitive by the finance evaluation team. After repeated field trials of the WiLL wireless in local loop system based on CDMA technology, the TEC in its report said, quot;the upgraded system bychanging the BSC and BTS was reoffered for accepting testing on 10-1-97. It is observed during testing of the system that a number of parameters have not been reoffered for testing, indicating that the system does not support these features and some of the parameters though reoffered for testing are not meeting the requirementsquot;.

The test report makes it clear that Qualcomm was given repeated chance to perfect its system but on each occasion it fell short of the minimum required specifications. It is not clear how DoT was giving such a long rope to a particular technology.

The report said, quot;Qualcomm had committed to implement these features by September 1996 and January 1997 and in future releases. quot;It is observed that after upgradation of the system by changing the BSC and BTS the features committed were not implementedquot;. Sources say that BSC base station controller and BTSbase trans receiver station are the most important cardinal features of any of the system. The report further noted, quot;already there is slippage on the part of Qualcomm in implementing the projectquot;. The TEC has in the annexure given a list of tests not offered by Qualcomm indicating that these features are not supported by the system. These include; line and junction tests from subscriber8217;s premises, tone and announcement validation, abbreviated dialling, temporary transfercell forward, three way calling, call waiting, subscriber unit line test, alarm call, hot line, system load and overload, reliability, calendar management, line and junction tests, monitoring of callsPSTN to WLL, WLL to PSTN and WLL to WLL, access to public utility services, FAX, DATA, payphone and future release not available in the system. The initial testing of the instrument was done during April-May 1996 and it was found that it did not meet full requirements. Qualcomm replaced hardware and software of BSC and BTS by upgraded version in December, 8217;96.