For the latest news, the process of opening a third telecom license in Tunisia, and continues serenely on time. This process is currently in the process of answering questions of candidates for the universal license. This process of technical issues where the answers were made by the Tunisian State, even allow candidates to propose amendments to legal documentation of the tender and especially to the same licensing agreement. This phase should be completed by 13 of the month of March 2009 and responses should occur no later than 7 April this year and the submission of bids on May 5, so we should know the name of the candidate contractor provisionally at the latest during the month of June 2009.

Meanwhile, 9 serious candidates are emerging. There are of course the Tunisian Divona, Vivendi and France Telecom in France, the STC of Saudi Arabia, the emirate Ittisalat BSNL and even the Indian and Chinese PCCW of Hong Kong. This means that the Tunisian offer is great international interest, despite the crisis. This also means, as the same ITU (International Telecommunication Union) in a recent report that the telecommunications sector is not in crisis as some would say.

Source [African Manager]

Many sign and rumors give Divona most of the chances to win the bid as a new growing company and the only Vsat and Wimax provider on the country knowing the local market and having almost a wide Wimax coverage that can be easily used for other telecommunication services.

After 22, 21, 20, 23, 24 and 25, TUNISIANA launches the prefix "26". The new code reflects the growth experienced by the private telecom operator since its launch on 27/12/2002. Strengthening the infrastructure that supports the growth of subscriber base of TUNISIANA tends to meet the future customers of the operator in securing freedom in the choice of number and better quality services.

Source [Tustex]

According to a Tunisiana insider at the last Mobile World congress that was hled 16-19 februray in Madrid - Sapin, Orascom Tunisia did sign an exclusive right for marketing the brand new Nokia E72 in Tunisia powered with their pusmail service.

The new phone is planned to start being sold starting next April for tunisiana suscribers only.

Recently, the Tunisian Office of topography and cartography (under the Ministry of Defense) has issued an official statement stating that the Court of Appeal of Tunis ordered permanently Orascom Telecom Tunisie (Tunisiana) and Maghreb and NGI NGI International no longer sell the GPS solution Weenee. Immediately, the company has redirected obverse Morocco. Its offer service road GPS navigation has been launched by Morocco Newcom, a subsidiary of the NGI International.

"The application is available on Weenee PND (GPS boxes) and smartphones, or PDA (Windows Mobile configuration) with a GPS. Of these, the tool enables Exchange Weenee exchange between GPS positions Weenee users via SMS ", says in a statement of the company.

Some technical specifications as presented by Weenee: A mapping interface and bilingual English / Arabic; symbolic and voice guidance in 8 languages, the most commonly used as Darija (Moroccan dialect) and Arabic classical solution covering 50,000 km of roads, 42 cities and more than 100,000 points of interest are listed in databases ...

Beyond the solution public, the NGI Newcom International and Morocco say they also offer bids for companies, communities and governments whose webmapping and GPS geolocation.

PND (GPS boxes) with the application and mapping Weenee Morocco are offered at prices ranging from 2575 to 2900 DH. Application Weenee and mapping of Morocco for smartphone or PDA GPS 1500 is sold at DH.

Source [Le reporter]

Djezzy -member of the Orascom Telecom based in algeria- is about to get a permit from the government to expand its services and go satellite offering large corporate customers up and down link from the Eutelsat broadband.

Orascom Telecom Algeria, a subsidiary of Orascom Telecom Holding Group, has chosen ATLANTIC BIRD™ 3 to expand its broadband infrastructure in Algeria.

Eutelsat has optimised the coverage provided by the steerable beam on this satellite for North African coverage in order to support demand from users, who include
licensed telecom operators, to serve public administrations and companies from the Mediterranean coastline to remote locations in the Sahara desert.

Using the DVB-RCS standard for two-way broadband services, Orascom Telecom Algeria will enable its clients to have access to a broad range of communications services including Internet access, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), data transfer solutions, videoconferencing and Voice over IP. The company is targeting enterprises operating in the oil, gas and mining sectors as well as public administrations, hospitals, schools, custom and immigration control etc.

In addition to the lease of 54 MHz bandwidth on ATLANTIC BIRD™ 3 (36 MHz for the forward link and 18 MHz for the return link), Eutelsat is also supplying turnkey engineering support for Orascom.

Via [EutelSat main site]

Indeed there is fresh questions come to mind about future ability of the company to offer such services in Tunisia through its sister company Tunisiana.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Egyptian wireless company Orascom plans to invest up to $400 million in a new mobile phone network in North Korea, one of the world's poorest and most tightly controlled societies.

Hatim E. El Gammal, an investor relations official with Orascom Telecom Holding S.A.E., said Thursday that the network would be the first based on 3G in North Korea.

El Gammal didn't elaborate on the deal but said construction would begin "in the near future."

Orascom said in a statement on its Web site Wednesday that a joint venture subsidiary, CHEO Technology, would offer services throughout North Korea for 25 years under the terms of the deal and exclusively for the first four years.

Orascom, the largest mobile communications company in the Middle East with 65 million subscribers, said it controls 75 percent of CHEO and the rest is held by the state-run Korea Post and Telecommunications Corp.

North Korea, a highly militaristic dictatorship in which dissent is severely punished, has lagged far behind its neighbors economically, with development stymied by years of mismanagement and isolation.

Still, the country has a working mobile phone network that covers the capital, Pyongyang, and some outlying areas. The network is based on the GSM, or global system for mobile communications, standard.

Mobile phone use, though not widespread, was once increasingly visible among North Koreans. Visitors to the country say it has markedly declined since 2004.

Orascom's investment will cover network infrastructure and license fees for the first three years "to rapidly deploy a high quality network and offer voice, data and value added services at accessible prices to the Korean people," the statement said.

The deal "is in line with our strategy to penetrate countries with high population and low penetration by providing the first mobile telephony services," said Naguib Sawiris, Orascom Telecom's chairman and CEO.

It operates networks in Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tunisia and Zimbabwe and previously had a business in Iraq.

North Korea, which carried out an underground nuclear test in 2006, has been negotiating with the United States and other countries to receive aid and political concessions in exchange for abandoning its nuclear programs.

The country has also taken some steps to liberalize its dilapidated economy in recent years, and it courts foreign investment.

Alex Kuznetsov, an analyst at Bear Stearns in London, estimates that North Korea will achieve 20 percent wireless penetration in 2012 and Orascom will begin turning a profit on the venture two years before that.

Though Kuznetsov acknowledged that political risk is "quite a serious factor" in North Korea, Orascom's background in other emerging markets suggests it can succeed.

Orascom Construction Industries, also of Egypt, said in July last year that it signed a deal with a state-owned North Korean trading firm to acquire a 50 percent stake in a local cement company near Pyongyang.

Lafarge SA of France announced in December it was acquiring Orascom's cement businesses. Lafarge shareholders approved the deal this month.

Via [Mlive]