Mozambique grants Vietnam’s Viettel mobile licence

Mozambique picked a unit of Vietnam’s unlisted Viettel as its third mobile-phone operator, the head of telecoms regulation in the southern African country said on Monday.

Mozambique picked a unit of Vietnam’s unlisted Viettel as its third mobile-phone operator, the head of telecoms regulation in the southern African country said on Monday.

Movitel, a unit of Viettel that includes a consortium of Mozambican investors, beat two other firms with its $29 million bid, Isidore Pedro da Silva, the chairman of the National Institute of Communications told state television.

The two other bidders were TMM, a unit of Portugal Telecom and UNI-Telecom, a joint venture between Angola’s Unitel SA and Mozambique’s Energy Capital SA.

Da Silva said the winning bid was awarded on technical capacity, not only price. Unitel had proposed $33 million, while Portugal Telecom had bid $25 million, he said.

A total of 22 firms originally bid for the license.

Movitel will enter a market dominated by Mozambique Cellular and Vodacom Mozambique, a unit of South Africa’s Vodacom .- Reuters

Tags: Viettel Mozambique

Posted by VBN on Nov 9 2010. Filed under Telecommunication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry