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Monday, June 16, 2003

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S.-led administration ruling Iraq has issued a tender for a nation-wide GSM cell phone network, which would give companies access to one of the biggest mobile markets in the Arab world.

A senior telecoms official with the U.S. administration told Reuters on Monday that Iraqi airwaves would be divided among 124 bands, opening up big opportunities for many to operate in Iraq, according to the tender issued on June 14.

"The tender came GSM as expected, otherwise there would have been a riot. The whole region operates on GSM," he said. referring to the global system of mobile telecommunications, which is the wireless standard used in most of the world.

A U.S. congressman in March had urged his government to build a wireless network in Iraq based on the rival CMDA (code division multiple access) technology developed by Qualcomm Inc. , a California company.

There are four separate networks operating at present in Iraq with around 100,000 total subscribers -- two in Iraqi Kurdistan, one in Baghdad and another in the southern province of Basra.

Karim Qader, a senior Iraqi engineer with Asia Cell, the operator in the Kurdish region of Sulaimaniya, said a national network would take six months to build and would attract at least two million subscribers in the first year.

"Iraq has been without modern communications. It will be a huge market. The land network was not up to scratch even in the best of days," Qader said, adding that GSM was the obvious network standard for Iraq.

The U.S. army now uses a 10,000-line GSM network built by MCI to communicate in Baghdad. MCI is the new name for bankrupt U.S. firm WorldCom Inc..

An administration spokesman said last week that the tender would be for one-a-half to two-year licenses.

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Direct Link:
--http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L16665441.htm

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