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| Afghanistan |
| New Cellphone Firm Vows End to Afghan Frustrations |
| 2003-07-24 |
| War-battered Afghanistan, where using a cellphone is a frustratingly hit-and-miss affair, will get its second GSM network on Sunday, and the company providing it vows to make failed calls a thing of the past. TDCA Ltd, trading under the name Roshan, meaning "light" in the Dari language, is owned by a consortium grouping the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, Monaco Telecom International (MTI), U.S.-based MCT Corp and French telecoms giant Alcatel. Its network will initially cover the capital Kabul, then expand to the five other main cities -- Herat, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad and Kunduz -- by January 9, entailing a preliminary investment of $55 million. Canadian CEO Karim Khoja told reporters at a slick outlet in Kabul on Thursday he expected to equal the market share of competitor Afghan Wireless Communication Co by the year-end. "We expect 50 percent by the end of the year and we intend to be the market leader within 12 months," he said. He estimated AWCC’s current subscriber numbers at around 40,000 and said his firm had a capacity of over 50,000 now which could quickly be increased to 100,000 on Alcatel’s system. "The pent-up demand is huge," he said, "even before we started we have had a huge number of people queuing for pre-subscription forms." Khoja, who worked installing a network in Croatia after the war there, said his firm had no problems with security in Afghanistan, in spite of its continuing instability. "What I have found throughout the world is that this is a service people want and they protect it for themselves because it is their service," he said. "In general, we have really had absolutely no problems whatsoever. Now that doesn’t mean we don’t take precautions, that we don’t have guards, or shelters with alarms in them, but in general, I have been pleasantly surprised." No suprise here, bad guys really like cell phones. They think they can’t be traced. Just keep thinking that way. He said the firm had had to overcome considerable bureaucracy, and also some demands for bribes. "But we don’t do anything that’s not ethical," he said. "But ethical is such a flexible concept, depending where you are." |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #2 Can we send that "Can you hear me now?" guy from the commercials over to plug this? Maybe somebody will shoot him. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2003-7-24 3:39:59 PM |
| #1 Spinboldak will get service after the town's cleaned up a bit..... |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-7-24 3:26:46 PM |