Six international telecom operators have qualified to participate in an upcoming tender to manage Lebanon’s two state-owned mobile operators, Alfa and Touch, according to telecoms minister Boutros Harb. The operators are must bid on both contracts…
Six international telecom operators have qualified to participate in an upcoming tender to manage Lebanon’s two state-owned mobile operators, Alfa and Touch, according to telecoms minister Boutros Harb.
The operators are must bid on both contracts by 7 September, TelecomFinance understands, with the Ministry of Telecommunications saying it will announce the results on 8 September.
In a tweet, Harb said that the qualified companies are Vodafone (LSE:VOD), Orange (EPA:ORA), Maxis (MK:MAXIS), Deutsche Telekom (XETRA:DTE) subsidiary Detecon, Turkcell (IST:TCELL) and Kuwait’s Zain (KW:ZAIN).
Orascom Telecom Media & Technology (LSE:OTMT)has managed Alfa under a BOT contract since 2002, while Zain has managed Touch, formerly known as MTC Touch, since 2004. As of June, Touch had a 54% share of the market, while Alfa held the remainder, according to Zain’s website.
Each qualified bidder is understood to have paid a deposit of US$20,000. The main change to previous terms is that the winning operators will take over operating expenses from the Lebanese government, an industry source explained.
Under the most recently available terms – from the 2011 renewal process, Orascom said it would receive a US$2.5m per month plus 8.5% of total revenue. The full terms for the new contract have not been disclosed.
In a stock market filing today, Turkcell stated that it “regularly monitors and evaluates investment opportunities in the region” and that it is “conducting a preliminary review” with a decision yet to be made by its board of directors.
Kuwaiti news agency KUNA confirmed that Zain too had qualified as a bidder.
Egypt-based OTMT , for its part, today denied that it had missed the qualification deadline, telling local newspaper The Daily Star that it had not been specified whether applications had been due during working hours or by midnight on the 1 July deadline.
A spokesperson for OTMT said: “We are currently trying to resolve this issue and we remain committed to our bid and to the telecommunication industry in Lebanon.”
Spokespeople for the remaining named bidders were not immediately available for comment.
The Ministry of Telecommunications first brought up the possibility of opening up the tender process in 2013, having in the past renewed the contracts on a near-annual basis. Lebanon’s two-player telecoms sector has in the past been criticised as home to the world’s highest mobile tariffs, corrupt and slow to implement upgrades such as 3G.
The industry source noted that given the country’s political stalemate, there was a 50:50 chance that the cabinet would approve the result of the tender.
