The Iranian government has granted the country’s third mobile phone licence to Tamin Telecom, the local company that won the licence in an auction in January 2009 with the UAE’s Etisalat.
The new operator should launch mobile phone services before the…
The Iranian government has granted the country’s third mobile phone licence to Tamin Telecom, the local company that won the licence in an auction in January 2009 with the UAE’s Etisalat.
The new operator should launch mobile phone services before the end of this year, said Reza Taqipour, the information and communications technology minister.
In a statement on the official IRNA news agency on 24 April, the Ministry of Information & Communications Technology said that it had awarded the licence solely to Tamin.
The ministry revoked Tamin’s joint bid with Etisalat soon after the pair won the auction last year. In May, the ministry granted the licence to Zain, only to withdraw the licence from the Kuwaiti company in September for undisclosed reasons.
Tamin has never disclosed its financial resources making it impossible to determine whether it can build a network covering a country as large as Iran.
Tamin will compete with incumbent operators Telecommunications Company of Iran (TCI) and MTN Irancell. TCI had 31 million mobile phone customers at the end of December last year and MTN Irancell claimed earlier this month that it had 21 million customers at the end of March. Both companies should report their financial results and audited customer numbers next month.
