WASHINGTON-A day before the civilian administrator of Iraq addressed the National Press Club and the U.S. Department of Commerce released the details of an auction of Iraqi mobile-phone licenses, a mobile-phone network began operations in Baghdad.
Batelco Iraq, a new division of Bahrain Telecommunications Inc., claims to have 10,000 operational lines, which coincidentally is the same number of lines claimed by bankrupt WorldCom Inc.’s affiliate MCI, noted The Register, a U.K.-based electronic news service.
Besides MCI, MTC-Vodafone is operating in Basra at the behest of the British military, which controls that southern city. There is also a holdover network in the Kurdish area to the north known as Kurdtel. Other areas of Iraq did not previously have mobile-phone service.
A spokeswoman for Ambassador L. Paul Bremmer of the Coalition Provisional Authority said it had not decided what it would do about the network.
Bremmer was the speaker at a National Press Club luncheon here Wednesday, the day after Batelco started delivering GSM phone calls to the outside world via a satellite link. While Bremmer spoke passionately about rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, he did not mention its telecommunications network, focusing instead on the power grid and water.
MCI received authority from the Department of Defense to operate a mobile-phone network and has contracted with Motorola Inc. to help it build one. Motorola told RCR Wireless News Thursday it was not aware of the Batelco network.
Batelco told the Associated Press it plans to participate in the July 30-31 auction of three regional mobile-phone licenses. The United States hopes these three licenses can be leveraged into nationwide networks to produce three competing networks.
The International Trade Administration, a unit of the Commerce Department, Wednesday released details of the auction to be held in Amman, Jordan. The licenses will be good for two years, at which point it is hoped an Iraqi government will be up and running and be able to make its own licensing decisions.
Batelco spent $5 million to set up the network. The Bahrain Telecommunications Co. is owned by the government of Bahrain and Cable & Wireless L.L.C. In addition to carrying calls from customers with GSM phones, Batelco also plans to offer service and free phones to Baghdad’s emergency workers.
Batelco and MCI both use GSM technology, which is used by Iraq’s neighbors.
