Details published about the tender for Iraq's new cellular licenses has shown that several of Europe's leading mobile phone companies will be barred for competing in the tender. The rules, published yesterday reveal a ban on any company that is more than 5% owned by a national government. This ban will block France's Orange and Germany's T-Mobile from entering bids.
Both France and Germany were strongly opposed to the US governments' war in Iraq, and it has been widely expected that companies based in those countries would loose out in the awarding of contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq. Adding this unusual shareholder limit effectively bans the two networks, both with substantial government ownership from bidding. Unfortunatly, the ruling also blocks Spain's Telefonica from bidding - even though Spain's government was supportive of the Iraq war.
Another interesting requirement is that any bidder must hold at least five cellular licenses. They could all be in the same country, and considering the fragmented license allocation in the USA, this ruling seems to favour the US based networks. Any other bidder would have to operate in at least five separate countries.
The contentious debate as to whether the networks will use GSM or CDMA seems to have swung towards the GSM camp with the requirement that any operator must "provide full national and international roaming service to their customers through agreements with other Iraqi licensees and with a wide range of operators in trading partner countries". The networks will also be required to provide roaming between the three regions that the licenses will be offered. The spectrum bands being made also favour GSM over CDMA.
Winning bidders will have to put up a $30 million bond, and the closing date for the tender is August 14th. Once the license is awarded, the winner will be required to start construction within 20 days."
Posted to the site on 1st August 2003
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/9421.php