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

[Etrit Bardhi]

Hmmm,  it seems that our French friends Pascal Copin and Bernard Kouchner
would like to give the job to Alcatel, that happens to be a French
company... I wonder why...

Etrit.

On Fri, 19 Nov 1999, Ismet Hamiti wrote:

> Taken without permission for fair use only.
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> 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.