STC is one of five firms to qualify for the Syria license auction, along with Qatar Telecom, France Telecom, Turkcell and the UAE’s Etisalat, which has dropped plans to bid.

“(STC) announces that it submitted on Wednesday, March 30, its technical and operational offer... The offers that are qualified by Syria’s (telecommunication) ministry will enter the final (financial) phase of the auction on April 27,” the company statement said.

Syria, with a mobile penetration of about 30 percent in 2007, started a tender in September to sell the third mobile operator licence.

The two current cellphone operators in Syria are South Africa’s MTN and Syriatel, which is mostly owned by Syrian businessman Rami Makhlouf.

An industry source said in October that STC could be among the strongest contenders.

France Telecom has said it decided not to submit a bid for Syria’s third mobile phone licence given the terms, with the price the main concern, given that the radio wave frequencies on offer were of lower quality and would have required a denser, and therefore more expensive, network build-out.