Over seven million mobile phone subscribers in Morocco

There are about 7.4 million subscribers to the mobile phone in Morocco, said on Tuesday general manager of the Moroccan telecoms regulatory agency (ANRT), Mohamed Benchaaboun.

The mobile phone market in Morocco is shared between Maroc-Telecom, in which French Vivendi holds 35% of shares and that also operates the land phone network and Meditel, a Morocco-Spanish-Portuguese consortium.

While Maroc-Telecom has seen its subscribers rise from 4.6 million subscribers in 2002 to 5.2 million in 2003, i.e. a 13.4% rise, Meditel's subscribers reached around 2.2 million in 2003, against 1.6 million in 2002 ("34.4%).

Land phone subscriptions, which had witnessed a decrease in the last three years, shored up again in 2003 with a 8.1% rise, he said.

For the ANRT, development of services, especially of data transfer and enterprises' IT, requires carrying on the liberalization of the sector.