WASHINGTON-After weeks of speculation, it appears that GSM technology has won out over CDMA systems in Iraq.
The Coalition of Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Minister of Communications Oct. 6 announced the winners of mobile-phone licenses in Iraq. Asia-Cell, the incumbent GSM provider, will continue service in the North. Atheer, which is reportedly associated with the Mobile Telecommunications Co. of Kuwait, was awarded the southern license. MTC is providing GSM service to the British military and other humanitarian efforts in the southern region.
The winner for the central license, including Baghdad, was Orascom Telecom of Egypt. Orascom does not have a network in place in Iraq, but it is a GSM operator in several African and Middle-Eastern markets.
The CPA received 35 bids to provide Iraqi mobile-phone service, and the winners had been expected to be announced in September. But the Iraqi Minister of Communications Haider Al-Abadi said that his appointment Sept. 4 delayed the process.
“The process of selecting the winning bids was well under way before my appointment as minister of communications on Sept. 4. I could not have given my approval without a careful examination of the process that led to the final selection,” said Al-Abadi. “In line with best international practice, the bids were assessed against a list of criteria that had been prepared before the bids were received. The criteria were designed to ensure an objective and fair assessment of the merits and failings of each bid. It is this open and transparent process that has led to the selection of the three consortia that will bring state-of-the-art mobile communications to Iraq for the first time.”
The bid process was anything but smooth.
Besides bringing Al-Abadi up to speed, the CPA was forced to relax the foreign-government ownership restriction from 5 percent to 10 percent after a bidders conference in Amman, Jordan, showed that the 5-percent restriction would make it difficult for bidders to qualify.
The only company currently authorized to offer mobile-phone service is the MCI division of bankrupt WorldCom Inc. MCI received authority from the Department of Defense to operate a mobile-phone network earlier this year. It became clear early on that MCI would probably not be awarded the Baghdad (central) license, because its parent company has been barred from government contracts.
