Focus on communications

A mother starts crying as she talks to her son on the phone at a private call centre recently set up in a busy shopping district in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. “I didn’t know if you were alive, because I couldn’t reach you,” Khamia Zaya, said to her son, who is in Canada. But Zaya isn't the only one facing communication problems. Residents in Iraq cannot communicate with their loved ones abroad because they can’t call outside the country from their homes. Most don’t even have working phone lines, since the US-led coalition bombed key communication buildings around Baghdad in March and looters stole almost all telecommunications equipment. At the private call centre, customers pay US $0.50 cents per minute to call anywhere in the world. The call center owner recently bought satellite telephone equipment in Amman, Jordan and set it up in Baghdad and pays a fixed monthly amount for a satellite telephone link. Ask anyone in Baghdad, and there’s a story to tell about what it’s been like to not have a telephone in the modern world for the past four months. Appointments must be made in advance, in person, and most business has to be done in person - a logistical nightmare for people used to talking to each other on the telephone. “As a college student, it’s difficult for me to arrange to meet my professors, even my friends,” Rita Raphael told IRIN in Baghdad. Jamalat Abed Jusuf, used to get a weekly call from her daughter, who is in Sweden. Now, she tries to call her and often doesn’t get through. She jokes that she spends all of her money on phone calls. “I have to work overtime to pay for the bill, since the war started,” Jusuf said. In July, the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which is running Iraq, asked bidders to submit proposals for a two-year mobile phone contract that could be worth up to US$ 200 million. Now, the temporary Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) appointed by the CPA wants to be involved, according to a private phone company worker, who declined to be named. Some are angry at the US's involvement in the communications process. “They’re asking why the CPA should decide the amount of money for the license instead of the IGC?" the worker told IRIN. “This will generate revenue that belongs to the country, so the process has slowed down.” The former Iraqi telecommunications and postal company was not allowed to bid for the contract, and international bidders cannot have more than 10 percent state ownership, which excludes telecom giants such as Orange (from Britain) and Batelco (from Bahrain). Bidders must also provide a US $30 million performance bond, a condition which deters investors without strong capital, CPA critics said. The watchdog group, Iraq Revenue Project Watch, run by the US-based Open Society Institute, said the result could be disastrous. Europe and the Middle East operate mostly on GSM standard mobile phones, while the United States operates almost exclusively on another system called CDMA. “Complete foreign ownership could pose problems in the future,” a recently published report by the group said. “To avoid stalling of reforms or re-nationalization, it is important that any measure to privatise enterprises or service provision creates local ownership by giving Iraqis an opportunity to participate in these changes.” The US telecommunications company MCI was recently awarded a US $45 million contract from the US government for 10,000 mobile phones, which went to CPA, IGC members and various political parties and contractors. Residents say they don’t care about the political wrangling, as long as new mobile phones are also available to them soon. “We see they gave the phones to the new government members, but that’s ok,” said Kareem Rubei, aged 42, a customer at the call centre waiting to use the telephone. “We had Saddam for 35 years, so we can wait a little longer for mobile telephones.” Allah Abdul Hussein agreed that a new mobile phone system would be “like a dream”. “GSM would be a very good thing to develop here, even if it costs us more money individually,” Hussein told IRIN, adding that he would prefer to use a mobile. Meanwhile, the poor state of communications continues to have an impact on humanitarian work. Thomas Doerrman from the international NGO, Medicins Sans Frontiers, told IRIN he spent most of his day visiting people he needed to talk to rather than calling them, due to the expense. But in some ways not having a local phone is good, he said, because he understands the situation better as he travels around Baghdad. "We just have a satellite phone, so you can imagine what it's like," Doerrman said. "We're not using any local phones, but my staff tells me some of them are working." One analyst estimated that it would cost US $1 billion to re-install all the landlines in Iraq. Mobile phone companies usually are willing to start up a network with one million subscribers. In the neighbouring Gulf countries of Bahrain and Kuwait, nearly 60 percent of the population uses mobile phones, according to the Iraq Revenue Watch report. The Iraq telecommunications and postal company is importing about US$ 2 million worth of equipment to build a new switching station so that residents who have working phone lines can be linked to the outside world once again, said a person close to the company who declined to be named. The switching station should be finished some time in October. Past efforts to improve communications in Iraq include work by Alcatel, the French telecommunications giant, on a US $75 million contract in 2001 to link Baghdad with the southern part of the country. And under the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme, Chinese firm Huawei Technologies received US $28 million to provide a phone service to 25,000 users. Now local people are growing impatient. “I’m a businessman, so I need to use the telephone,” Munaf Abdel Munam, a fledgling real estate broker who uses an expensive Thuraya satellite phone for most of his transactions, told IRIN. “If I have a phone at home or in the office, or a mobile, it doesn’t matter to me, I just need something that is going to be cheaper for me in the long run,” he said. Haider Bader, aged 30 was one of the people who stood guard at the doors of a communication building with the new Chinese equipment when the looters came in April. Bader is now trying to start his own call centre. “It broke my heart to see equipment stolen around Baghdad, because I knew what kind of equipment was there and how expensive it was - new from China,” he told IRIN. “The electricity went and it didn’t come back for three days,” he added.