Jordan Times
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Iraq to launch bidding
for mobile licenses
AMMAN (AFP) — Iraq will launch a bidding process for new mobile phone licences
next month, Iraqi National Communications and Media Commission (ICMC) chief
Siyamend Othman said on Tuesday.
Othman made the statement at a press conference held on the sidelines of a
three-day forum on the development of Iraq which opened here yesterday with the
participation of Iraqi ministers and businessmen.
“We will announce the opening of the process of bidding for the new mobile
licences for Iraq by holding a conference in London July 21-22”, Othman said at
the press conference in the presence of Iraq's Telecommunications Minister Juwan
Masum.
Othman pointed out Egypt's telecom giant Orascom currently controls Iraq's
central region, while mobile phone operations for the south are managed by
Atheer, a branch of the Kuwaiti firm MTC, and the north is in the hands of
Asiacell, a consortium of Iraqi and Gulf firms.
The London conference is expected to be attended by representatives of major
mobile phone operators as well as Iraqi government officials and
parliamentarians, in an effort to secure transparency for the bidding process,
Othman added.
Communication experts predict there will be five million mobile phone users in
Iraq within three years, and eight million within 10 years.
At the conference, the ICMC chief also indicated that Iraq hopes to bolster its
sovereignty by putting the country's official domain name on the Internet within
weeks.
“We hope to announce very soon the return of Iraq's domain name `.iq' back on
the Internet,” he said.
“We are at the final stages of negotiations for the return of `.iq' and we are
quite optimistic that we can do so in the coming weeks,” Othman added.
Iraq is negotiating to get its place in cyberspace with the Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an international, non-profit
organisation that is responsible for Internet Protocol addresses.
Business leaders in Iraq say the ability to create a presence on the Internet
with websites ending in `.iq' will be a boost to commerce.
The three-day forum provides a chance for Iraqi officials to meet international
business community leaders to discuss their needs for rebuilding Iraq, the
forum's organiser John Glassey said.
Meanwhile, Iraqi Water Minister Abdul-Latif Rashid told the conference that
security in the war torn country is the biggest obstacle to development.
“Security is a problem, logistics are a problem,” Rashid said, but he insisted
that not all of Iraq is plagued by violence, citing the relatively peaceful
northern Kurdish region and areas of the south, and urged foreign companies to
look at the options available.
“As a word of advice to overcome these problems, many outside consultants and
contractors can find partners in Iraq and cooperate with them,” Rashid said.
“There are many government institutions and state-owned companies who have
equipment and manpower, and it will be much cheaper to use for implementation by
foreign contractors,” he added.
Representatives of over 100 public and private Iraqi companies are participating
in the forum which aims to ease the process of Iraq's economic development and
boost commercial relations between the Iraqi companies and the international
business community.
The forum comes three weeks ahead of an Iraq donor meeting to be held in Jordan,
and follows an international conference that was held last week in Brussels,
urging the world community to show more generosity to the battered country.