IRAQ'S PRIVATE-SECTOR TELECOMS FIRMS FORGE AHEAD

C O N F I D E N T I A L BAGHDAD 001023 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/02/2018 TAGS: ECON EINT ECPS SUBJECT: IRAQ'S PRIVATE-SECTOR TELECOMS FIRMS FORGE AHEAD WHILE THE PUBLIC SECTOR LANGUISHES REF: 2007 BAGHDAD 2820 Classified By: Economic Minister Charles P. Ries for reasons 1.4 (b) an d (d). ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: Iraq's private-sector led mobile and wireless telecommunications markets are developing apace. The Kurdistan-based, Barzani family-affiliated Korek Telecom recently concluded an interconnection agreement with Zain, the Kuwaiti-backed leading nationwide operator. The agreement marked a milestone: customers of Iraq's three licensed nationwide global system mobile (GSM) operators--Korek, Zain, and Qatari-owned Asiacell--can now all call each other, greatly expanding the mobile service available and integrating the national market. Private-sector providers of Wireless Local Loop (WLL) and Wi-Fi voice and internet services similarly continue to expand their presence. While the private sector forges ahead, however, Iraq's primary public-sector communications bodies--the Ministry of Communications (MOC),the Iraq Telephone and Post Company (ITPC),the State Company for Internet Service (SCIS),and the Communications and Media Commission (CMC)--struggle to perform their respective roles, hampered by weak leadership, technical capacity and human resource constraints, and ongoing security challenges. Without stronger leadership, Iraq's public sector communications institutions run the risk of rendering themselves irrelevant or, worse, impeding the private sector's progress. END SUMMARY. -------------- THE PRIVATE SECTOR FORGES AHEAD -------------- ¶2. (U) Korek recently concluded an interconnection agreement with Zain, paving the way for customers of Iraq's three licensed nationwide GSM operators to call each other. Korek users can now call Zain users, and vice versa. The agreement is the most recent in a series of deals done by the three nationwide GSM operators since they won their fifteen-year, USD 1.25 billion licenses in an auction held by the Government of Iraq (GOI) in Amman, Jordan, in August 2007 (reftel). Zain and Asiacell have a roaming agreement, allowing their users not only to call each other, but also to use each other's networks. Korek and Asiacell also have a roaming agreement. (NOTE: Generally, an interconnection agreement allows users of one network to call users of another network; a roaming agreement also allows users of one network to use another network to make calls when they are outside the coverage area of their provider's network. END NOTE.) ¶3. (C) The three nationwide GSM operators continue to build out and upgrade their infrastructure and, in Zain's case, to integrate assets it acquired when it purchased Iraqna, an Egyptian-backed firm that had operated in central Iraq from 2004 to 2007 under a license granted by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). (NOTE: From 2004 to 2007, Zain, which formerly did business in Iraq under the name MTC Atheer, operated under a CPA license in the south, while Asiacell operated in the north. Korek, under circumstances many local contacts called into question, outbid Iraqna in Amman for the third nationwide license. Cash-poor Korek is now in buyout talks with UAE-based Etisalat. Zain acquired Iraqna for USD 1.2 billion in December 2007, making it Iraq's largest operator. END NOTE.) ¶4. (U) Zain, Asiacell, and Korek now claim roughly 7 million, 4 million, and 1.6 million customers, respectively, giving the Iraqi GSM market more than 12 million subscribers and a nationwide penetration rate of approximately 37 percent. Penetration in urban areas is far greater than the national rate: Baghdad's is roughly 70 percent. Pre-2003 mobile usage was essentially nil. Moreover, all three providers are upgrading their second generation (2G) technology to so called 2.5G and 3G technologies, which transmit data in addition to voice communications. ¶5. (U) Private sector providers of other technologies are expanding as well. The CMC auctioned two nationwide WLL licenses in 2006 and awarded a third license to ITPC. (NOTE: WLL offers its users voice and internet services similar to those of GSM but based on code division multiple access (CDMA) technology. END NOTE.) ITPC, in turn, awarded more than 18 sublicenses for firms to operate in each of Iraq's governorates. Several WLL licensees are deploying networks and now serve an estimated 250,000 subscribers. A handful of internet service providers (ISPs) using long range Wi-Fi devices cater to an estimated 250,000 subscribers in and around Baghdad, Basrah, and Kurdistan. In addition, an unknown number of local ISPs lease access to very small aperture terminals (VSATs) and utilize shorter range Wi-Fi devices to provide internet service to neighborhoods. Much of this activity is unlicensed and unregulated, and in some high density areas service has become "polluted," i.e., degraded by excessive and overlapping traffic. -------------- THE PUBLIC SECTOR LANGUISHES -------------- ¶6. (C) The MOC has lacked genuine leadership since ex-Minister of Communications Mohammed Allawi (Iraqiyya) formally resigned in November 2007. (NOTE: Allawi is a cousin of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and belatedly withdrew from the GOI as part of Iraqiyya's withdrawal. END NOTE.) Still a member of the Council of Representatives (CoR),Allawi exerts some influence over the Ministry through his relationship with Acting Communications Minister Jassim Mohammed Jafar, who is the full time Minister of Youth and Sport. Acting Minister Jafar, however, is unfamiliar with communications issues and has been disengaged from his MOC portfolio, visiting the Ministry infrequently and only to attend to minimal administrative matters. Minister Jafar has also proven unresponsive to USG efforts to contact him regarding communications issues. Due in part to a lack of MoC leadership, a draft telecommunications and media law to replace CPA Order Number 65 has stagnated in the CoR since its first reading in May 2007. The MOC has also been reluctant to conclude a much needed cross-border telecommunications interconnection agreement with Turkey. (NOTE: EMIN raised this particular problem with Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, and the DPM promised to look into it. END NOTE.) Bureaucratic paralysis has also prevented the MOC from proceeding to execute either of two contracts it signed--one under former Minister Jowan Massum and another under former Minister Allawi--to connect Iraq's national fiber optic network to the global system of undersea telecommunications cables. ¶7. (C) The de facto leadership vacuum manifests itself in the operations of the MOC's two major state owned enterprises, ITPC and SCIS. ITPC--Iraq's sole provider of landline telecommunications services and owner of the country's fiber optic backbone and microwave networks--has been feckless in its efforts to build out, repair, and maintain this vital infrastructure. Roughly 1.3 million Iraqis are landline telephone subscribers, but only 60-70 percent of them actually have service and only an estimated 25 percent pay their bills. Fiber cuts resulting from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and errant digging on infrastructure projects (often unrelated to communications) plague the network and go unfixed: ITPC lacks a sufficient cadre of technically competent engineers and technicians. ITPC presently has a contract with Nortel to install equipment throughout the existing national fiber network; the project has an estimated completion date of March 2009, but ITPC's inability to test the fiber as a precondition to Nortel's work has delayed execution. ITPC recently contracted Nortel to do the testing itself, which may help expedite the equipment installation. If the fiber optic backbone were operating at its potential, private sector firms and MNF-I would readily pay ITPC for access to the network. ITPC's Director General (DG),Audai Abdulamir, reportedly intends to resign in the summer, which may leave the company even more adrift if the GOI does not quickly appoint a more competent replacement. ¶8. (C) SCIS, Iraq's public provider of internet service, is similarly afflicted by technical capacity and human resource constraints. SCIS has roughly 260,000 mostly dial-up internet subscribers. Since assuming, in September 2007, operations and maintenance (O&M) for the USG-funded, USD 19 million GOI wireless broadband network (WBBN),the WBBN has operated an estimated 60 percent of the time. Moreover, the frequent service disruptions have delayed progress on a related USG-funded project to install video teleconferencing (VTC) equipment piggybacking on the WBBN. The WBBN links (when it works) 42 GOI sites, including most of the ministries and other key locations, such as the Prime Minister's Office. (COMMENT: Successfully installing and maintaining VTC capability throughout the GOI could reduce the Coalition's need to travel to the red zone for routine meetings at the ministries, saving security outlays and, potentially, lives. END COMMENT.) One positive development here: SCIS DG Kassim Hassani recently asked the Iraq Transition Assistance Office (ITAO) for technical advice in drafting an SCIS scope of work for a GOI-funded O&M contract for the WBBN. ITAO is providing the requested assistance. ¶9. (C) The CMC, Iraq's independent telecommunications regulator, has likewise suffered from weak leadership and security challenges. The CMC, inter alia, allocates and regulates radio spectrum for telecommunications services. Formally comprised of a nine-member Board of Commissioners, one of whom appointed as a chairperson, the CMC has limped along with only four commissioners for months. The Chairman, Siyamind Othman, intends to leave his position at the end of his four-year term on April 18, 2008. Meetings with former Communications Minister Jowan Massum (PUK, and daughter of PUK CoR bloc leader Fuaod Massum) suggest that she is angling to be the next chairperson of the CMC. The CMC may however be leaderless if the GOI fails to nominate quickly Othman's replacement, whoever it may be. (COMMENT: The net effect of such a vacancy may be minimal: security challenges have prevented the CMC from policing Iraq's radio spectrum effectively. Past attempts to shut down unauthorized Wi-Fi transmissions, which were polluting service, resulted in violent intimidation and attempted assassinations of CMC staff: the staff has been understandably reluctant to press such matters since. END COMMENT.) ¶10. (C) COMMENT: Post's diplomatic engagement and technical assistance for Iraq's telecommunications focus on promoting a vibrant, private sector-led, independently regulated market that delivers reliable, affordable services to all Iraqis. Owing primarily to strong investor interest in penetrating Iraq's still maturing mobile and wireless telecommunications markets, the "private sector-led" part of this vision is moving forward with alacrity. But, the private sector is growing so much faster than the GOI's communications institutions are developing, the government risks being rendered irrelevant as a provider of basic services, the trustee of the national backbone networks, and an independent regulator. Worse, ineffective public institutions could limit the private sector's progress, for example, by preventing ISPs from buying access to a functioning fiber optic and microwave backbone network so that the firms could offer Iraqis more affordable high-speed internet access. The GOI must appoint competent leaders to the MOC, ITPC, and the CMC to ensure that priority issues--telecommunications legislation, cross-border interconnections, O&M for the national backbones, and spectrum management--are addressed. The GOI must also prioritize training and education for the upcoming generation of engineers and managers to ensure the durability of any near term gains in institutional capacity. END COMMENT CROCKER