Connectivity Providers Database

From: William Raisner <RAISNER@USITA.GOV> To: <sghuter@psg.com> Date: Wed, 07 Aug 1996 16:13:15 -0400 The following article(s) are provided courtesy of Interfax News Agency represented in the U.S. by Interfax USA. Contact Paul Rogers - (303) 825-1510. **Source Interfax 8/8/96 Uzbekistan Announces Telecoms Tenders The Uzbek Communications Ministry has announced two international tenders designed to bring large investments into the Central Asian country's telecommunications sector, Uzbek Long-distance chief Khurshid Karimov told Interfax Tuesday. The first tender looks to draw a soft loan worth 12.7 billion Japanese yen (about $117 million) to modernize the telephone network. The tender is open to all countries. Results will be announced in October. The funds come as part of a June 1995 agreement between Uzbekistan and the Japanese Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF). Bidders must present the ministry with their proposals by September 23 on supplying and installing modern telecoms equipment and lines worth 11.329 billion yen according to the following lots. Lot 1 - A system capable of handling 251,500 subscribers in Bukhara, Khorezm and Navoi regions and the Karakalpakstani republic. Interstation lines are to total 24,151, to be expanded to 43,500 at a later date. Lot 2 - Installation of fiber-optic main lines between Nukhus and Bukhara and Tashkent and Angren totalling 761 kilometers. The lot also includes intrazone fiber-optic connections 962 kilometers in length in the same regions. Another 707 kilometers will be laid later. Lot 3 - Digital radio relay line connecting Angren, Kokand, Namangan, Andijan and Fergana; Samarkand and Karshi; and Urgench and Turtkul. Lot 4 - Organization of the system's overall functioning and management. The winner will install the equipment under the supervision of the contractor. The second tender is for a project to modernize the telephone system in the capital Tashkent. Bids are due September 15. Karimov said that the winner would get the chance to take part in the privatization of the Tashkent's urban telephone network. Plans are to form a closed-type stock company with the winner. The Uzbeks will hold 51% of the shares, and there will be no less than three founding members. The Uzbek side will be represented by national phone company Uzbektelekom. Its contribution to charter capital will be the network's existing infrastructure. The foreign investor is expected to take responsibility for financing the city's network and necessary equipment deliveries. The joint venture will be in effect for 15 years. Uzbek telecom providers are presently in the process of replacing obsolete equipment with new digital systems. Siemens of Germany and Alcatel's German subsidiary have installed four digital exchanges with capacity for 31,000 numbers so far. A total of 11 stations will be installed this year with capacity of 200,000 numbers. The first stage of the city's redevelopment plan sees replacing 350,000 numbers at obsolete exchanges and introducing 150,000 new number in 1996-1998. The winner is supposed to have completed the legal and organizational groundwork for forming the joint venture by December 25, 1996. The Uzbek parliament in August last year dropped telecom providers from the list of companies that cannot be privatized. A number of private telecoms companies with foreign investment were formed in 1995 as a result. German divisions of Dataline and Alcatel took part in the Chirkom joint venture to manage the telephone system in the city of Chirchik. Bakrie Group of Indonesia and Uzbektelekom formed Uzbektelekom AO International to develop electronic communications in Jizak, Surkhandarya, Kashkadarya and Samarkand regions. Italian STET and Siemens set up a long- distance company called Udinet. A number of foreign companies, including Daewoo Telecom and Deutsche Telekom are in talks to form joint ventures. The competition to name a partner in the Tashkent project is the only open tender at present in the sector. **Source Interfax 7/3/96 Ericsson Put $6 Mln AMPS Mobile Network in Place in Tashkent Ericsson of Sweden has started testing the $6 million D- AMPS/AMPS mobile radio telephone network it has put in place for Rubicon Wireless Communications, a U.S-Uzbek venture, in the Uzbek capital Tashkent. A representative of the Swedish company said the network, which, built around 884-series base stations, can handle an initial 1,500 subsctibers, would begin commercial operations in August. The network, he stressed, is easily expanded. Currently the only provider of AMPS mobile telecoms in Uzbekistan is Uzdunrobita, a joint venture of ICG of the United States (45%) and the Uzbek Ministry of Communications (55%). It opened AMPS base stations in Tashkent, Bukhara, Karshi, Samarkand and Urgench earlier this year and is testing another network in Andizhan near Tashkent to cover the thickly populated Ferghana Valley. **Source Interfax 7/1/96 Stet, Siemens Plan to Pour $200 Mln into Uzbek Telecoms Italy's Stet International S.p.A. and Germany's Siemens plan by 1999 to invest $200 million in developing intercity and international communications in Uzbekistan under a deal to form a joint venture with Uzbek concern Uzbektelekom. Udinet, a division of the nation's Ministry of Communications, owns 51% of the venture, Stet has 41% and Siemens holds 8%. The agreement was signed for 15 years, but can be extended if all sides agree. Uzbektelekom will grant its partners use of part of its telecoms network. The foreign cash will go to install digital intercity exchanges in all 12 Uzbek regions and to expand intercity and international communications in Tashkent. The venture plans to lay digital trunk lines between all Uzbek regions using fiber-optic cables and digital radio relays. It will set up a long-distance communications control center in Tashkent. The deal stipulates the ministry must not form any other joint long-distance communications operators, although a ministry spokesman said "this does not mean Udinet has exclusive rights to offer these services." One of Udinet's competitors will be Buztel, a wholly owned foreign subsidiary of Indonesia's Bakrie Group, founded specially to offer long- distance mobile and stationary cellular telecoms services. Buztel is currently registering at the justice ministry, after which it will receive a communications ministry operating license. Bakrie Group plans to invest $2.2 billion in Uzbek telecoms. Uzbekistan currently has 12 regional analog exchanges and Tashkent counts three exchanges, two of which are digital. One of the digital ones is fitted with Siemens' EWSD equipment, has capacity of 4,000 lines and was commissioned in 1995. An international satellite communications station with 150 channels and fitted with Japanese NAEX-61 gear. **Source Interfax 4/24/96 Superior Wins Uzbek Mobile License to Compete with Bakrie, ICG Malaysia's Superior Communication has won a license to operate GSM mobile telecoms across Uzbekistan to compete with an established venture in which ICG of the United States has a minority stake and newcomers Bakrie Group of Indonesia. Superior this April took a 65% stake in a new $50 million venture - with junior partner Ukrtelecom - that is already negotiating with city authorities in Tashkent, Namangan and Bukhara to put in place mobile switches, Khurshed Karimov, the official at the Uzbek Ministry of Communications in charge of international projects, told Interfax. Bakrie Group the February secured ministry agreement for its plans to set up a wholly owned Uzbek subsidiary that will invest $1 billion into an another GSM-standard network in the nation. But Bakrie is still drawing up its licensing application, Karimov said. The ICG venture, Uzdunrobita, has enjoyed a monopoly since it was formed in 1992. It has already installed base stations with a capacity of 140,000 numbers in six cities using the AMPS standard. Its subscriber base in Tashkent has grown from 800 to 5,000 over the last year. **Source Interfax 4/16/96 ICG Venture Brings Mobiles to Uzbekistan's Ferghana Valley An Uzbek venture in which America's ICG has a 45% stake has put a cellular base station on line in Andizhan, a city in the highly populated Ferghana Valley, as part of an overall effort to provide mobile telephony in the Central Asian nation. The venture, Uzdunrobita, has already installed base stations in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, Bukhara, Karsi, Samarkand and Urgench using the AMPS 800 mHz system, its general director, Yuri Snezhkov, told Interfax. The Andizhan station could eventually provide 70,000 mobile lines but will have just 1,500 subscribers initially. Overall the venture has put in place capacity of 140,000 lines. Snezhkov said its subscriber base in Tashkent alone has soared tenfold over the last year to 5,000. Uzdunrobita, in which the Uzbek Ministry of Communications has a 55% stake, has generated $5.5 million in tax revenues for state coffers since it was set up in 1992, Snezhkov said. Soon, however, it will have to compete with a group of Malaysian companies that this February set up an Uzbek subsidiary that will invest $1 billion in GSM 900 mHz standard cellular telephony in Uzbekistan. **Source Interfax 3/4/96 DAEWOO DEEPENS UZBEK TELECOM COMMITMENT WITH $14 MLN CREDIT Daewoo Telecom of South Korea has deepened its already substantial commitment to the Uzbek telecoms market, providing $14 million worth of switching equipment on credit. Vladimir Gudagov, director of Uzimpexaloka, a trading company owned by the Ministry of Communications that signed the contract, said the equipment would provide 45,000 new user numbers at 11 exchanges in six towns around Tashkent by the end of the year. Daewoo, which has other industrial interests in Uzbekistan, was one of the first to invest in the Central Asian nation's telecoms. In September 1994 it opened a 50,000- line exchange in the Ferghana valley. It is currently completing a similar facility to provide 40,000 new lines in Syr Darya region. Contracts for respectively 30,000 and 20,000 new subscriber lines are under negotiation for the regions of Bukhara and Andizhan. The South Koreans are financing all developments themselves. Daewoo Telecom last September took a 51% stake in a joint venture AlokaDaewoo to make switches for rural Uzbekistan at a half-built plant in Urgench, Khorezm. The plant, which will go on line in October 1996, will make equipment capable of providing an annual 2 million new lines when fully operational. The South Koreans over the next five years plan to pump $15 million into the joint venture, which has a charter capital of $6.5 million. **Source Interfax 2/22/96 UZBEKS TO BORROW $90 MLN FOR TELECOMS MODERNIZATION Uzbek telecom providers will this year borrow over $90 million abroad under an ambitious $4.5 billion three-stage program to double telephone penetration from 7 to 14 lines per 100 people by the year 2010. Vladimir Kravchenko, deputy minister of communications, told Interfax in an exclusive interview that providers would open 50% more subscriber lines, long-distance exchanges in every regional center and the country's stretch of Trans-Asia- Europe cable to link Germany and China. The Uzbeks hope 40% of their lines will be digital when they end the first stage of their program, from 1994 to 2000, Kravchenko said. He said providers will build out their digital networks from regional bases during the second two stages of the program, from 2000 to 2005 and 2006 to 2010. The Uzbeks, Kravchenko said, plan to spend $15 million of a 12.7 billion yen ($120 million) telecom loan commitment made by Japan's Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund. German electric engineering giant Siemens, meanwhile, has started work under contracts worth respectively $35 million and $17 million to supply switching equipment to handle 50,000 lines for new exchanges in Tashkent and Samarkand and fiber- optic cable and data transmission hardware for TAE. Daewoo Telecom will this year complete a project to modernize a 40,000-port exchange in Syr Darya region and is currently installing new switching equipment to handle respectively 30,000 and 20,000 lines in Bukhara and Andizhan regions. The Ministry of Communications last September set up a joint venture, AlokaDaewoo, in which the South Koreans have a 51% stake, to make digital switching equipment for rural exchanges at a half-built plant in Urgench, Khorezm. The venture, which will make enough equipment to provide up to an annual 2 million numbers when fully operational, has a charter capital of $6.5 million. Daewoo plans to invest $15 million into the venture, which will go into production in October 1996. Kravchenko said another ministry venture, Tashafinal, would make 1,000 digital transmission systems a year at a plant in Tashkent starting this summer. Nuswift Services Ltd. of Greece has a 60% share in the $4 million joint venture set up last November, he said. The Bakrie Group of Indonesia plans to invest $212 million into four joint ventures with Uzbektelecom, Uzbekistan's national telephone company, to modernize telecoms in Dzhizak, Surkhand Darya, Kasha Darya and Samarkand regions, Kravchenko said. Uzbek telephone companies last year spent $60 million in international loans on new digital exchanges. Right now only 6%-7% of local and 13%-14% of long-distance switching has been digitalized. Uzbekistan has 1,200 mechanical and coordinate exchanges. ** Source Interfax 10/23/95 ALCATEL INSTALLS NEW TELEPHONE EXCHANGE IN UZBEKISTAN Alcatel RFT, a German division of the French giant, has put a new digital exchange into place in the Uzbek regional center of Namangan to handle local and long-distance calls under a DM 14.5 million contract with the local telecoms provider. The exchange will provide 11,000 local lines, 3,000 long-distance ones and 250 ports, the Uzbek Ministry of Communications told Interfax. Uzbekistan is carrying out a sweeping five-year program to replace its 12,000 mechanical exchanges and 200 automatic switches with modern digital ones. So far only 6%-7% of local exchanges and 13%-14% of long-distance ones are digital. Only 1.5 million of the 22 million Uzbeks have access to a telephone. The government plans to borrow abroad to help it pay for the program. The German government last year lent it DM 500 million to finance the project. The Uzbeks have already used $80 million of that money to hire Germany's Alcatel to upgrade a Tashkent ATX. Alcatel this April installed a 5,000-number exchange in the city. The Germans will put a total of 66,000 new numbers, 20,000 channels and 11 radio-relay lines in place in Tashkent over the next five years. Germany's Siemens, South Korea's Daewoo Telecom and Japan's Mitsui are also taking part in the program. ** Source Interfax 6/21/95 JAPAN LENDS UZBEKISTAN $150 MILLION TO DEVELOP ITS TELECOMMUNICATIONS Japan's semi-government Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund has lent Uzbekistan a 12.7 billion yen (roughly $150 million) at 3% annually to upgrade telecoms, mostly in the country's dry North-West. Uzbekistan, which will borrow for 30 years with a 10-year grace period, will call an international tender to carry out telecom modernization just as soon as it signs a credit agreement, Vladimir Kravchenko, the country's deputy minister of communications, told Interfax. The project includes plans to lay fiber-optic cables totaling 720 km between Nukus and Beruni on the Amu Darya and the ancient city of Bukhara in the west and from the capital Tashkent to nearby Angren in the east. It also involves putting in place 490 km of radio-relay lines between in Nukus, Urgench and Navoi and modernizing or building 27 new switches in Nukus, Urgench, Bukhara and Navoi to handle 192,000 numbers. Telephone penetration in Uzbekistan is very low. Officials say just 1.5 of the nation's population of more than 22 million have access to a telephone network operated by 200 Soviet-made exchanges. The loan is the first the OECF has made in Uzbekistan. Now the fund is looking at the possibility of lending the country $100 million to help build a factory to repair passenger rail cars for the new national railway.