JEDDAH: Saudi Telecom Co. (STC) has submitted an offer for a mobile license in Syria, the company said Saturday, one of the few countries in the region with low mobile penetration and promising growth chances. STC is one of five firms to qualify for the Syria license auction, along with Qatar Telecom, Turkcell, France Telecom and the UAE's Etisalat, although the latter two have dropped plans to bid. "STC announces that it submitted Wednesday, its technical and operational offer... the offers that are qualified by Syria's telecommunication ministry will enter the final (financial) phase of the auction on April 27," the company said in a statement on the bourse website. Syria, with a mobile penetration of about 30 percent in 2007, started a tender in September to sell the third mobile operator license. The two current cellphone operators in Syria are South Africa's MTN and Syriatel, which is mostly owned by Syrian businessman Rami Makhlouf. STC faces increased competition from Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) and Zain Saudi in its home market. An industry source told Reuters in October that STC could be among the strongest contenders, especially after ties between the Damascus government and Riyadh improved last year. France Telecom has said it decided not to submit a bid for Syria's third mobile phone license given the terms, with the price the main concern, given that the radio wave frequencies on offer were of lower quality and would have required a denser, and therefore more expensive, network build-out. Meanwhile, the activities of the 16th edition of International Exhibition for Information and Communication Technologies - Shaam Expo 2011 have ended Friday. The exhibition was hosted by the Syrian Computer Society and organized by Arabian Group for Exhibitions and Conferences for the 4th consecutive edition, at Damascus Fairground. The exhibition witnessed visits from many ministers, ambassadors, and official delegations from various Arab and foreign countries. Saudi Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology Mohammad Jamil Mulla stressed the importance of the exhibition and the evolution it reflected in the Syrian IT sector that manifested in the many specialized and highly qualified Syrian youth with high levels of technical knowledge in ICT, he also emphasized the importance of exchanging experiences between the two countries through bilateral agreements or through the Arab Telecommunications and Information Council of Ministers. Dr. Muhammad Tawfik Allawi, the Iraqi Minister of Telecommunications, also highlighted the significant progress that the Syrian ICT sector has witnessed which was translated by the wide participations of local companies in addition to the high level of brilliant ideas that was evident.
