Orascom Expects 100,000 Customers in North Korea

Orascom Telecom says that it expects to sign up an initial 100,000 subscribers when it launches its new GSM network in North Korea. Speaking on a conference call, CEO Naguib Sawiris said that the service would start in three main cities in the country and the company will then pause to assess the impact.

"We want to see first how fast we will sell that and what kind of ARPUs (average revenue per user) we are going to generate and how the system will be there. Will they allow everybody to take the line?" the news agency, Reuters reported Sawiris as saying.

Sawiris said that he was astonished at how fast the normally slow moving bureaucracy in the Communist State wanted them to start rolling out their network.

The company aims to spend an initial US$200 million on the network over the next twelve months, with US$100 per year for the two years after that.

Orascom's license was granted to the company's subsidiary CHEO Technology JV Company ("CHEO") which is controlled by Orascom Telecom with an ownership of 75% while the remaining 25% is owned by the state owned Korea Post and Telecommunications Corporation. The terms of the license allows CHEO to offer services to its customer throughout the country, the duration of the license is 25 years with an exclusivity period of four years.

Regulators in the country met with their counterparts in China last week to discuss controlling mobile radio frequencies along the border between the two countries.

Posted to the site on 13th March 2008