Spanish-Moroccan-Potuguese consortium wins Morocco's second Gsm mobile phone licence

With a tender of $1.08 billion, Spanish-Moroccan-Portuguese consortium "Medi-telecoms" won Morocco's second GSM Mobile Phone Licence, it was officially announced here.

The consortium was selected among seven foreign telecom operators shortlisted to take part in the race for the private phone licence. These include French-U.S. group, France Telecom-Motorola, U.S. GTE-Bell Atlantic, Italian Telecom Italia Mobile, French-U.S. Vivendi-SBC Communications and UK-U.S. Vodaphone Airtouch and UK-based Orange.

The announcement was made this Monday at a press briefing by Moroccan Minister of the Interior Driss Basri, other government members and the manager of "ANRT," Morocco's telecommunications watchdog (Agence Nationale de Regulation des Telecommunications). The final decision will, however, be made by the government in the coming days.

In addition to the licence price, the selected firm will carry out a $700 million investment in the 14 coming years.

Morocco's state-run telecom Ittissalat al-Maghrib has a GSM phone licence with an estimated 150,000 subscribers.