Chinese telecom equipment manufacturing company Huawei has emerged as the lowest bidder for the $70 million WLL services project of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd.

The contract envisages setting up 800,000 code division multiple access (CDMA) based wireless in local loop telephone lines in Delhi and Mumbai.

Huawei had jointly bid with Himachal Futuristic Communication Ltd  for the WLL-based mobility services project.

Another Chinese manufacturer ZTE Ltd has emerged as the second lowest bidder. Other vendors which had tendered bids included global giants Motorola, Ericsson and Nortel.

Motorola had earlier serviced MTNL by putting in place nearly 100,000 WLL lines in Delhi.

MTNL is evaluating the bids and is expected to award the contract in the next couple of weeks.

HFCL officials said the company had a number of manufacturing facilities and had installed 150,000 lines in Punjab itself apart from the expertise that Huawei brought on the table from handling similar projects in China.

MTNL's expansion into WLL limited mobility space comes at a time when private sector companies like Reliance Infocomm has a subscription base of over 3 million.

Tata Teleservices, also operating in Delhi, has nearly 100,000 WLL subscribers. Though MTNL was among the first telecom operators to offer WLL services, it could not leverage on the first mover advantage.

The company which operates in the country's  most lucrative telecom markets lost out as it did not plan enough capacity to get in more than one lakh subscribers.