BAGHDAD, 7 October 2003 — Iraq yesterday awarded its first national mobile telephone network contracts to Egypt’s Orascom, Atheer Tel and Asia Cell, both largely Kuwaiti owned, saying it expected the long-awaited GSM service to begin by the end of the month.

“The companies that will bring Iraq world class mobile communications are in the northern region Asia Cell consortium; in the central region Orascom and in the south Atheer Tel,” interim Telecommunication’s Minister Haidar Al-Abbadi said.

“The service should start in a few weeks. We have been told by the end of the month,” Abbadi told a news conference.

A mobile phone network was impossible to set up in Iraq during the 1990s due to UN-imposed trade sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein’s deposed regime.

Orascom Telecom Holdings SAE is owned by Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris and members of his family. Its other main investors are Alaa El-Khawaja and Allied SA Ltd.

Asia Cell Telecommunication Co. Ltd. was set up in 1999 and primary investors include Wataniya Telecom of Kuwait and the United Gulf Bank, a spokesman said.

The company already has 55,000 subscribers in northern Iraq, the spokesman told AFP, adding that its new contract will expand its territory to cover the major population centers of Dohuk, Mosul, Arbil, Sulaimaniyah, Kirkuk and Tikrit.

He said the infrastructure would have to be in place within 20 days, but predicted service would start only within two months.

Atheer Telecom Iraq, which will cover the southern region of the country, has three primary investors: Mobile Telecommunications Company of Kuwait, Dijla Telecommunications Corporation of Iraq and Kuwait’s Khorafi National construction company. Abbadi stressed that one of the main criterion in selecting the companies ensuring they had Iraqi shareholders or participants. For the selected companies the level of Iraqi participation was between 10 and 50 percent, he said. He said the winners of the contracts were chosen from among 35 companies which submitted more than 100 bids.

“This is an impressive demonstration of belief by the international business community in the future of Iraq and its prospects for building a robust economy,” Abbadi said.

He stressed the mobile network would strengthen the war-torn country’s security.

“This will enhance the security of the country,” he said, referring to spotty nationwide communications since US forces entered the country six months ago and the chaos which followed.

Out of Iraq’s 1.1 million land phone lines, not including Kurdistan, 259,000 were rendered inoperable during the war, while 841,000 are functioning.