Damascus - The Ministry of Communications and Technology on Sunday ended its deadline for receiving tenders to license a third mobile communications company in Syria.
Assistant Minister of Telecommunications and Technology Mohammad al-Jalali said 6 Arab and foreign companies submitted their offers since the announcement on September 23rd.
Al-Jalali pointed out that these companies are: Etisalat of the UAE, Etisalat of Saudi Arabia, STC and Qtel of Qatar, Turkcell of Turkey, France Telecom of France and TAMCO of Iran.
He added that these tenders will be evaluated by a committee from the Ministry with the participation of a German advisory company as two candidates will be chosen to go to the next stage.
SyriaTel and MTN are the two mobile operating companies now in Syria in partnership with the General Establishment for Telecommunications through BOT contracts since 2001 for 15 years.
The two companies have 10,2 million subscribers in Syria. Contracts with these two companies will be transferred into licenses in time with the entry of the third operating company.
Fadi Allafi .H.Sabbagh
© SANA (Syria Arab News Agency) 2010
