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Tunisia Plans Telecommunications Boost

Global Arab Network - Robert Bailey

Thursday, 15 October 2009 22:05

During his election campaign Tunisia’s President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has stated he is determined to accelerate broadband access for the country’s 10.5 million people.

The government considers information communications technology as an important tool to boost the country’s economy and to adapt the education system to the opportunities opened up by IT including e-commerce, e-medicine as well as e-learning.

In order to achieve this, the state has steadily relaxed its control on the provision of telecommunications services allowing foreign investment and new entrants into the country’s telephony sector.

This has helped make Tunisia’s telecommunications market one of the fastest growing in the region according to a recent report by Cambridge Massachusetts-based Pyramid Research.

The report predicts that broadband services will be a considerable source of growth in the country over the next five years with a compound annual growth rate of 15.1 per cent between 2009 and 2014 producing revenues of $174 million by 2014 up from $81 million in 2008.

Foreign investment continues to be an influential factor in development of the sector. Dubai’s Tecom and Dubai Investment Group (both part of Dubai Holding) paid $2.25 billion for a 35 per cent stake in the state-owned Tunisie Telecom in 2006.

The funding has allowed the state provider to expand domestically and in cross-border ventures such as Mauritania where it owns the country’s main mobile company Mattel.

As a result of the substantial investments that have been made since the mid-1990s, Tunisia now has one of the most developed telecommunications infrastructures in North Africa. Internet access is available country-wide with a fibre optic backbone and international access via submarine cables, terrestrial and satellite links.

The mobile sector, in particular, has experienced phenomenal growth, especially since a second operator, Tunisiana, was licensed in 2002. The latter, a joint venture formed by Orascom of Egypt and Wataniya, a subsidiary of Qatar Telecom, paid $454 million for its licence.

Mobile subscribers rose from 50,000 in 1998 to more than 8 million in 2009 and the cellular market is now estimated to have a penetration level of 86 per cent shared equally between Tunisie Teleco and Tunisiana.

Additional competition has been introduced following the award of a third mobile licence in July this year to a consortium 49 per cent owned by France Telecom and 51 per cent by Tunisian Internet service provider Divona Telecom.

According to Tunisia’s Communications Minister El Hadj Gley the joint venture intends to invest TD 1 billion ($780 million) in constructing their new network with the aim of commencing initial services starting early in 2010.

Gaining an edge over the incumbents in the mobile market will not be easy for the new entrant. However, a rapid rollout of 3G services is expected to prove popular especially at the high end of the market with business subscribers wanting hand held devices able to offer PC-like capabilities.

The government anticipates that the competition and investment entering the sector will endow Tunisia with a cutting-edge telecoms infrastructure. This is aimed to meet the needs of business and foreign investors, especially high-tech information and information communications technology firms and promote the government’s goal of making Tunisia a regional hub for the ICT industry.

Global Arab Network

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