Telecommunications companies Maroc Telecom, Meditel and Maroc Connect have won the bids for obtaining three third-generation (3G) public networks licences in Morocco.
The three winning companies, along with Nejma Telecom Maroc, a subsidiary of the Kuwaiti Wataniya telecoms group, had competed for the 3G licences. They submitted their bids on Jul. 14.
After evaluating the operators' proposals, the National Agency for Telecoms Regulation (ANRT) issued a report and presented it to Moroccan Prime Minister Driss Jettou, who approved the choice of the three winners on Jul. 20.
"The operators who already have licences in Morocco have a better knowledge of the Moroccan market. This made their offers more coherent and realistic, and therefore more feasible," said the ANRT in a press release issued on Friday.
ANRT had precised earlier that the evaluation of the offers would be made on the basis of the bidder's infrastructure commitments, cover, quality of service, and diversity and cohesion of the offer.
The evaluation gave the first position to Maroc Connect, a local company which was granted last August the new generation license to establish and use a new fix telecommunications network.
The second position went to Maroc Telecom (Ittissalat Al-Maghrib), which is controlled by French media group Vivend.
Meditel, a joint venture between Spain's Telefonica and Portugal Teleco, came third in the ANRT's evaluation report.
The three winning companies will have to pay MAD 360 million (USD 41.23 million) each. They are also engaged to launch important investments in the domain of telecommunications in Morocco, to offer annotative services, in a way that responds to the needs of the Moroccan markets and the expectations of the clients, said the ANRT.
The press release added that the process of the attribution of 3G licences constitutes the last stage of liberalisation of the Moroccan telecoms sector, as it was designed by the Moroccan Premier over the period 2004-2008.
© Morocco Times 2006
