The hub plans to route all international telephone traffic originating from the south Asian region. According to sources, VSNL has sent letters to the three shortlisted bidders. It has also asked them to submit their detailed proposal for the regional hub by June 11.

"After the proposals are received, they will be evaluated and a final partner will be chosen," sources said. The final partner will be finalised about a month after VSNL receives the detailed proposals, they added.

While Cable & Wireless has bid alone for the project, the other two are consortia comprising three companies each. While the BT-MCI bid has a third partner in the form of Marubeni of Japan, Global One is a consortium comprising France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and Sprint of the US.

Theprocess of shortlisting the bids had got considerably delayed due to a variety of reasons. Initially, a high-power committee was formed comprising members from the department of telecommunications (DoT) and VSNL to evaluate and shortlist the bids which took time. The committee was then unable to meet for some time due to Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd's (MTNL) global depository receipt issue.

VSNL had initially proposed to form a joint venture with BT and MCI for the hub project, which was rejected by DoT. The department, instead, forced VSNL to invite bids from national and international companies for the joint venture to set up the hub.

This considerably delayed VSNL's plans to set up the hub as it had to come out with an offer inviting bids from interested companies. By October 17, the last date for submitting the bids, VSNL received only seven bids for the project with global majors like AT&T and NTT of Japan deciding not to participate. However, few other major companies like Telstra of Australia andTeleglobe of Canada participated in the process.