Turkcell Seeks Arbitration in Iran License Dispute
Turkey's Turkcell says that it has started international arbitration procedures over difficulties it experienced in launching a new network in Iran. According to the statement released to the Istanbul Stock Exchange, Turkcell said that it had incurred significant loses on its investments after Iran granted a license to a consortium led by Turkcell in February 2004 to operate a GSM network in the country.
Turkcell, though its 51% owned subsidiary - Irancell, originally signed an operator license with the Iranian government in 2004, but it fell foul of a clamp down on foreign investments by the conservative Parliament. The Parliament accused the company of having links with Israel - and after a year of battles, the license was reissued - this time to South Africa's MTN Group. MTN took a minority 49% stake, while 51% was allocated to the Iran Electronic Development Company (IEDC).
Iran has two main networks, the incumbent state operator, TCI - which the Mobile World estimates ended last September with some 19.5 million customers, and 81% of the market. Irancell ended the month with a respectable 3.7 million customers. There are also a few small regional operators with negligible subscriber bases.
Posted to the site on 15th January 2008
