Fifteen companies have expressed interest in bidding on Iraq’s fourth licence, minister of communications Farooq Abdulqader Abdulrahman has told Gulf News.
He declined to disclose the operators’ names, and was unavailable for comment.
Earlier this…
Fifteen companies have expressed interest in bidding on Iraq’s fourth licence, minister of communications Farooq Abdulqader Abdulrahman has told Gulf News.
He declined to disclose the operators’ names, and was unavailable for comment.
Earlier this week, he told journalists that bidders included the Etisalat, Turkcell, MTN, Vodafone, Verizon and France Telecom.
The new mobile service provider, which would be selected through an open tender, would give 35% of its operating revenue to the government as part of the deal. The winner will partner with state-owned operator Iraq Telecommunications and Post Company, which falls under the Ministry of Communications. Zain Iraq is currently the country’s largest mobile operator with over ten million subscribers, followed by Asiacell (7.91 million) and Korek Telecom (2.53 million). Kurdish operator SanaTel provides services in the north-eastern province of Sulaymaniyah and had an estimated 508,000 subscribers as of June 30, according to TeleGeography figures.
