Kalimat seeks to sell 15% stake to Iraq partner

24 July 2007

Dubai: Kalimat Telecom, which has a 10-year licence to operate a fixed wireless phone network in Iraq, said it is discussing selling a 15 per cent stake in the $1-billion venture to an Iraqi partner.

Kalimat is part of Kuwait-based Trade Links, a multi-sector business entity of American and Gulf ownership. "We will have an Iraqi partner. We are holding talks for a 15 per cent stake," Wilson Varghese, president and CEO of Kalimat, told Gulf News.

The company yesterday awarded a $275 million infrastructure contract to Chinese telecom vendor Huawei Technologies.

Kalimat aims to deliver five million CDMA lines of service to both private homes and business customers by 2011. In the first year of operations it hopes to have half million lines.

Other Kalimat consortium partners include Voex, which will serve as the operator of the network to be established in Iraq and American tele-communications consulting firm Artel Inc.

The consortium won the 10-year wireless licence from Iraq's Communications and Media Commission in September 2006.

Huawei will execute the project in four phases beginning in September this year.

The vendor will supply and provide deployment services for CDMA (code division multiple access) base stations and help create an all-IP network infrastructure. "This is the first time Iraq is witnessing a full-scale deployment of fixed wireless technology across the country, not just in urban clusters but in remote areas as well," Varghese told reporters.

"Huawei will play a vital role in Kalimat's planned rollout of the Iraqi wireless local loop (WLL) network, extend its next generation network to more than 5,000 towns and create the Middle East's largest wireless telecom network."

In addition to providing voice telephony services for local, national and international calling, access to the internet, Kalimat will also deploy WiMAX technology that provides wireless data traffic over long distances.

In January 2006, Iraq had 1.2 million fixed lines, a penetration rate of just over four per cent. The bulk of fixed line subscribers are in Baghdad.

Kalimat said the cellular market is much stronger in comparison, with 8.7 million subscribers, representing a 30 per cent penetration rate.