[Info-tech] Row erupts over Kosovo mobile network contract

[Ismet Hamiti]

Taken without permission for fair use only.
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Row erupts over Kosovo mobile network contract

By Andrew Gray
PRISTINA, Nov 16 (Reuters) - A row has erupted between international and
local officials over one of the most glittering prizes in Kosovo's
reconstruction process-a multi-million dollar deal to build a mobile
phone network.The battle involves two of Europe's telcommunications
heavyweights, Alcatel of France and Siemens of Germany.It also
highlights some of the most central issues, such as disputed ownership
of state property, faced by officials trying to rebuild the war-scarred
territory's economy.In a nutshell, Kosovo's United Nations-led
administration favours a bid from Alcatel to provide equipment and
supply the network. A commission set up by the U.N. decided at the
weekend the French firm should be awarded the contract.But the local
public post and telcommunications company, PTK, has chosen an offer from
Siemens and says officials from the U.N. mission, known as UNMIK, have
no right to interfere."As I understand it, they have the right to
supervise-and they're doing that-but not to stop us and to give us
solutions,"  Agron Dida, PTK's general manager, told Reuters."The owner
of this company is the people of Kosovo, not UNMIK," he
said.Unsurprisingly, the U.N. takes a different view. It backs the
decision in favour of Alcatel made by the Joint Civil Commission on
Postal and Telecommunications Services (JCC)."PTK is not a private
company but a public company. And so the JCC has the rights of an owner
that would be the rights of a shareholder in a private company," said
Pascal Copin, UNMIK's director of post and telecommunications.The
pressure is on both sides to find a way out of the impasse soon.
Hampered by antiquated equipment, years of underfunding and NATO bombing
earlier this year, Kosovo's telecommunications system is in urgent need
of renovation.In many places, only local telephone calls are possible
via the landline network....if people have a working phone line at all.
A Serbian mobile network, Mobtel, operates erratically and only in the
capital Pristina.UNMIK says a contract with Alcatel will be ready in
about two weeks and it will be signed.It is banking on the PTK not
daring to delay a process which should rapidly improve the quality of
life for many people here and bring in substantial revenue for its own
coffers."I'm sure that the PTK management wishes for the good of the
Kosovars and the good of Kosovo and I'm sure that the PTK management
will sign the contract with Alcatel," Copin said.Technically and
financially, both bids were generally acceptable, officials familiar
with the process say. In each case, the PTK would borrow around 35
million deutschemarks to set up and run the network and repay from
revenue generated.Dida says the PTK's objections to the Alcatel bid stem
primarily from a plan to use a main switch, which routes all calls in
the network, and billing system in Monaco.But Copin says this would only
be a temporary measure to get the system up and running more quickly.
After a couple of months, billing and switching would be done in Kosovo,
he says.He says UNMIK favours the Alcatel bid as it offers more
ingenious solutions for getting round technical and bureaucratic
obstacles to set up a comprehensive network more rapidly.Whatever the
final outcome of this row, the issue of who runs Kosovo's state-owned
businesses is already one of the most thorny issues here and is likely
to rear its head frequently.UNMIK runs Kosovo, legally still part of
Yugoslavia, under a U.N. Security Council resolution. U.N. officials say
this gives them the right to control state assets in Kosovo.Often,
however, members of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority booted out of
state jobs under a decade of Serb repression -- feel they should be back
at their desks and in charge.Equally, Serbian and Yugoslav state
official protest that the assets still belong to them and say the U.N.
is stepping beyond its mandate by creating separate Kosovo entities such
as PTK.