Turkcell qualifies for 3rd Saudi mobile operator
Posted by meb at March 23rd, 2007
Turkcell and Oger Telecom have been qualified to bid for Saudi Arabia’s third mobile phone license, which is said to be worth $5.3 billion. The Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) selected seven consortiums from a short list of nine applicants on Thursday. They are: Kingdom Turkcell, Oger Telecom, Samawat-Bharti, Abdullah Abdul Aziz Al-Rajhi-Reliance, MTC & Partners, Tawasul-Digicel and MTN Saudi Arabia. “The evaluation conducted by the CITC has resulted in qualifying seven of the nine applications,” said Dr. Mohammed Al-Suwaiyel, governor of the commission, in a statement. The board of directors of the CITC, chaired by CITC Minister Mohammed Jamil Mulla, selected the applicants. The CITC will open the single sealed financial proposal of each of the seven eligible applicants during a ceremony in Riyadh on March 24 in the presence of the companies’ representatives.” These financial proposals will then be evaluated and the final results will be submitted to the board of directors and subsequently to the Council of Ministers for awarding the license to the successful bidder,” CITC spokesman Sultan Al-Malik said.
Malik did not say when the winner of the third mobile license would be announced but it would take place in a month. The CITC did not give values for the bids for the third GSM license but market analysts predicted that the government would receive nearly 20 billion Saudi Arabian Riyals ($5.3 billion) from the license sale.
Saudi Arabia, considered the largest telecom market in the region, also plans to end the fixed line monopoly of Saudi Telecom Company this year to liberalize the market. There are four million fixed-line users in the kingdom, which has a population of 27 million, including expatriates. Ten consortia led by leading international companies including Mahanagar Telephone Nigam, Verizon Communications of the US and China Telecom are competing for the Kingdom’s second land phone license.
source: Today’s Zaman
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