Etisalat may get Libyan license by the year end
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: UAE-based telco Etisalat hopes to receive Libya’s third GSM license by the end of the year 2009. The company is also interested in expanding its service to the Lebanese market.
According to Jamal al-Jarwan, head of Etisalat’s international investments, the company is waiting for privatization in Lebanon and would like to take a majority stake in one of the existing two operators there.
The license tender was launched by Libya’s General Telecommunication Authority on February 16, 2009. The result was supposed to be announced in following June, however, interest in the concession only gathered pace in July.
Etisalat may bid for Kuwaiti telco (UAE)
UAE operator Etisalat said on Thursday it was interested in bidding for a stake in Kuwait’s third mobile phone operator to tap demand for telecoms in the Middle East’s fourth-largest oil producer.
Kuwait’s government has invited companies to express an interest in bidding for a 26% stake in the operator that it is setting up, by a September 7 deadline.
“We are very interested in bidding,” said Jamal Al-Jarwan, general manager of international business at state-owned Etisalat, the third-largest Arab telecom provider by market value.
“It makes a lot of a commercial sense for us to have operations in many countries, especially in the Middle East… Kuwait’s GDP per capita is high,” he said by telephone.
Etisalat chairman Mohammed Omran told Reuters last month the company was evaluating the Kuwaiti invitation, though had not make a decision about bidding.
Still, it is not clear the Kuwaiti government will allow foreign companies to compete for the stake, Jarwan said.
Kuwait’s Al-Seyassah newspaper said on Monday the Kuwaiti government had decided against allowing foreign firms to take part.
On Thursday, Kuwait’s Al-Wasat newspaper reported as many as 11 foreign and 14 local companies, including Saudi Telecom (STC) and Egypt’s Orascom Telecom, were considering competing for the stake.
Others include Oman Telecommunications (Omantel), National Bank of Kuwait and Kuwait Finance House (KFH), the newspaper reported, without saying how it got the information.
Kuwait’s Global Investment House, Bahrain’s operator Batelco and Commercial Bank of Kuwait (CBK) may also bid, the newspaper said.
A CBK official, who did not want to be identified, said the bank was preparing a bid in partnership with Noor Financial and a telecom operator he would not identify.
Kuwait’s government will sell 50% of the planned operator in an initial public offering, 26% to an operator and keep the rest.
Kuwait has two mobile phone networks, one run by Mobile Telecommunications (MTC) and the other by National Mobile Telecommunications (Wataniya), which is controlled by Qatar Telcommunications (Qtel).
Hatim Al-Gammal, head of investor relations at Orascom, and a spokesman of NBK declined to comment. A spokesman for Batelco could not immediately comment.
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