I am not very interested with this subject nor will I take sides... however, I'd like to point out that while the other companies might be offering a substantially lower price, there are other factors that need to be considered. 1) Payment options (it is possible that ZTE's payment option is long-term. 2) Deployment (they might have proposed a rapid deployment option. 3) Expertise (yes, expertise carries a price). 4) Sustainability (can the other companies sustain the implementation even if there are delays in payments?).
Now to the other arguments 1) ZTE is pretty much known accross the world with a proven record, AHI on the other hand is a company listed with a 300,000 peso paid-up capital. 2) ZTE has a website.. LOL

... yes, a website, at least for this matter, matters (there's geocities if they can't afford one). How can you call yourself a telecommunications company gunning for multi-billion projects and yet you don't have a website. 3) ZTE can fund itself.. where will a company with a paid up capital of only 300,000 pesos get the money to fund the project?... and to make it more interesting, AHI is just a startup. Assuming they can undertake the project, they don't have the capability to accurately come up with a proper cost analysis since they don't have any experience with doing any form of business yet (specially with a such scale)... and another possible scenario is that it will end up like the CICC wherein we were told that it will only cost 200+ million pesos then all of a sudden it ballooned to over 800 million pesos when it was completed... will come with the same or even more amount if that happens. If I were the government, it is a no brainer.