Emad Makiya, CEO of Zain Iraq, the country’s biggest mobile phone operator, said the firm planned to extend its services to “every remote village” in the semi-autonomous northern area after officially launching operations in its three main cities on Wednesday.
It started initial operations in Iraqi Kurdistan in October.
“The roll out has been completed for phase one. We’re starting phase two very soon. The whole investment is going to be in the neighborhood of $100 million for Zain in the Kurdish region,” Makiya said.
“Currently we are covering the metropolitan cities of Dahuk, Sulimaniya and Arbil, and the connecting highways between the three governates and the rest of Iraq.”
Makiya said phase two involved getting vendors to help Zain extend services around the region and said the ground work for this would start in May.
Iraq did not have a mobile phone market under the rule of Saddam Hussein, but the industry has boomed in the past eight years after the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled him.
Zain, one of the Gulf’s biggest telecoms firms by value, regards Iraq as a strategic high-growth market. It secured a $1.25 billion license to operate for 15 years in Iraq in 2007 and competes with AsiaCell and Iraqi Kurdistan-based Korek.
Zain has 12 million subscribers and Makiya told Reuters in January it expected to add up to 18,000 new subscribers a month from Iraq’s Kurdish zone.
Makiya said Zain had formally appealed against a $262 million fine imposed by Iraq in January for breaching its license.
Iraq’s Communications and Media Commission (CMC) last month said it had fined Zain for putting 5 million SIM cards in the local market without permission.
Zain had said it was surprised by the penalty and said the license fee it had paid Iraq allowed it to build a network, use the spectrum and issue a range of SIM card numbers.
“We’re fighting it legally. We’ve already submitted our legal explanation to the CMC and to the hearing committee and we’re waiting for the results,” Makiya said.
“We are fully confident that this should be resolved in an easier manner than resort to the law.”
He said Zain was also in talks with AsiaCell — which earlier this month said it had stopped interconnection with subscribers of the “unlicensed lines” — to get the lines reconnected.
The Iraqi government has criticized Zain and other providers for patchy coverage, but Zain blames reception problems on military jamming as security forces try to prevent militants from detonating bombs.
Makiya said operating in the Kurdish region was easier, particularly because it was safer than the rest of Iraq.
“There is no interference over there like you have here in Baghdad because the region is very secure,” he said. The lack of jamming and the better infrastructure network in the Kurdish area should also improve the quality of calls, he added.
