South Sudan opens bidding for mobile phone gateway

September 13, 2007 (JUBA, Sudan) — Semi-autonomous south Sudan has opened bidding to build a $8-10 million mobile phone gateway to control incoming and outgoing calls in the capital Juba, the southern Telecoms Minister Gier Chuang Aluong said on Thursday.

An agreement to tender for the gateway was reached in May between Sudan’s central government in Khartoum and former rebels who now run their own affairs in the south following more than two decades of civil war.

“We are advertising for gateway building here in south Sudan,” Aluong said. “The (price) ceiling we’re looking at is from $8 to 10 million.”

He said the company that is chosen would also lay a fibre optic network in Juba.

Aluong said the gateway would mean a significant drop in Internet costs in the southern capital, which is still being rebuilt after a 2005 peace deal that ended the civil war, brought a coalition government to Khartoum, and promised a referendum on southern secession by 2011.

Tariffs for southern mobile operator Gemtel would also drop, Aluong said. Gemtel, which Aluong said has recently constructed seven new towers in southern towns, pays $50,000 a month to use the Ugandan gateway and its international dialling code, 256.

“When we get the gateway we’ll use 249,” said Aluong, referring to Sudan’s dialling code.

According to a north-south memorandum, mobile operators Gemtel and Network of the World, both partly owned by the southern government, will operate only in the south while other mobile operators that signed with Khartoum will work nationwide.

But Aluong said northern operators wishing to expand to the south still needed to run their plans by the southern government, and complained that at least two firms had begun surveying fresh areas of the south without permission.

He said that a southern governmental committee was hoping to renegotiate the memorandum so that companies signed in the south could also expand to the north.

(Reuters)