Winner of Egypt's third mobile network to be announced today
Egypt, Business, 7/4/2006

The winner of Egypt's third mobile network will be announced Today at a news conference at 12:00 (09:00 GMT).

Egypt's telecom regulator said that nine of 11 bids for the country's third mobile phone-license had passed a technical evaluation and would go on to make financial bids and take part in the auction.

The regulator said two bids had been disqualified after the technical evaluation.

The first was by Emak, a company in Kuwait's Kharafi Group, and India's Reliance.

The second was by Saudi Telecom, with Telecom Malaysia and a company transliterated as Biko Telecom.

The auction starts at a minimum of 2.5 billion Egyptian pounds ($434 million) for the value of the license, in addition to 3 percent of total revenues, a statement from the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority said.

The winner of the third license will compete against Vodafone Egypt and MobiNil, which now share the Egyptian mobile market between them.

The two existing operators had close to 13 million subscribers between them at the end of 2005, in a country of more than 73 million people.

The regulator named the bids which passed the technical evaluation as:

-Emirates Telecommunications/Etisalat, the Egyptian Post Office, National Bank of Egypt and Commercial International Bank (CIB).

-Mobile Telesystems (MTS) of Russia and TeleTech of Egypt.

-Turkcell of Turkey, Banque Misr of Egypt and Gulf Finance Company.

-Telenor of Norway and Egypt's National Telecommunications.

-Wataniya International of Kuwait with Univest, Al Watany Bank of Egypt and Arnan Trading.

-Qatar Telecom (Qtel) with the Naeem Group and Singapore Tech Telemedia.

-MTN of South Africa and Raya Holdings.

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