Telecom Egypt, the country’s fixed-line operator, has yet to decide whether to bid on the 55% controlling stake in Vodafone Egypt that it does not already own.
On 21 May, Telecom Egypt revealed that it had held initial talks about the stake with…
Telecom Egypt, the country’s fixed-line operator, has yet to decide whether to bid on the 55% controlling stake in Vodafone Egypt that it does not already own.
On 21 May, Telecom Egypt revealed that it had held initial talks about the stake with Vodafone. The UK operator confirmed that talks had taken place.
According to Tarek Kamel, Egypt’s communications minister, the senior managers of Telecom Egypt will have to wait before they can offer to buy the 55% stake owned by the UK’s Vodafone.
“This issue must be dealt with calmly, because it takes some time and requires studies and comparisons and research into available options,” said Kamel in a statement on Egypt’s state-run Mena News Agency late on 24 May.
On 13 May, Tarek Tantawy, Telecom Egypt’s chief executive officer, said that the firm planned to enter the mobile phone market later this year, although he gave no details of how the company would move into the market.
Instead of buying the remaining equity in Vodafone Egypt, Telecom Egypt could wait for the Egyptian government to auction a fourth mobile phone licence, which could happen as soon as October this year.
When the Egyptian authorities awarded the third mobile phone licence to the UAE’s Etisalat in 2006, they granted the Emirati company an initial grace period during which time it would have no additional competitors. The period of grace ends this October.
However, a foreign telco could outbid Telecom Egypt in an open competition potentially leaving the state-owned firm with nothing.
