If we do have to go to arbitration, this may be a case we should watch. Iran Daily reports TurkCell, a mobile phone operator, was prevented from growing its network because Turkcell allegedly had links with Israel i.e. the licence was withdrawn without good reason in contravention to the agreements signed?
Roll on the end of the Ashura public holiday. Continuing to hold. 1120k.
Turkey’s leading mobile phone network Turkcell has filed an arbitration lawsuit against the government over difficulties it experienced in launching a new network in Iran. According to a statement released to the Istanbul Stock Exchange, Turkcell said it had incurred significant losses on investments after Iran granted a license to a consortium led by Turkcell in February 2004 to operate a GSM network in the country, cellular-news.com reported. Turkcell, which owns some shares of Irancell, claims the government of Iran allegedly blocked its acquisition of its stake in the Iranian mobile operator. The Turkish network originally signed an operator license with the Iranian government in 2004. Turkcell claims it had been seeking a majority stake in Irancell but the government pushed through legislation in April 2005 to limit its stake to 49 percent. The cellco alleges it then faced a number of other blocking tactics and it was left with little choice but to walk away from the deal. The Iranian parliament suspected that the company had links with Israel--and after a year of battles, the license was reissued--this time to South Africa’s MTN Group. MTN took a minority 49 percent stake, while 51 percent was allocated to the Iran Electronic Development Company (IEDC). Iran has two main networks, the incumbent state operator, Telecommunication Company of Iran--which the Mobile World estimates ended last September with some 19.5 million customers, and 81 percent of the market. Irancell, second in Iran’s mobile market, ended the month with a respectable 3.7 million customers. There are also a few small regional operators with negligible subscriber bases. _______________________________________________________
A clip from an old Iranian movie below: the sort of thing that Iranians perhaps can't watch without fast broadband, and a reminder of the control freakery they are subject to when they can access fast broadband at work?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-ZR5HzcrP8
UCL Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
