etisalat says no Omantel discussions for time being

Tunis: Emirates Telecommunications Corp is waiting to see what conditions are put on the sale of a stake in Oman Telecommunications before deciding on a bid, the UAE firm's chief operations officer said on Friday.

"We are still not in negotiations with the government of Oman on the sale of 19 per cent of Omantel," Ahmad Julfar told reporters. "We will wait for the conditions placed by the Oman government to see if they fit with our expectations."

Emirates Telecom (etisalat), the third-largest Arab telecom operator by market value, has spent over $6.5 billion on foreign acquisitions in the past three years and runs networks from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan.

Last month it said it was interested in buying into and running Omantel, the first public expression of interest in the Omani operator since the government announced plans to sell a stake to make the company more competitive.

Etisalat's expression of interest sent shares in the Omani firm up 10 per cent to a 21-month high. A 19 per cent stake in Omantel would be worth around $620 million at Friday's closing price of 1.776 Omani rials.

Julfar, speaking on the sidelines of an investment conference in Tunis, said his company was looking out for investment opportunities in Tunisia.

"We heard there was an idea to give an operator licence for a third-generation mobile phone network," he said. "That interests us and we want to get an idea of this kind of opportunity."

Tunisia's telecoms market is divided between former monopoly Tunisie Telecom, which still has a monopoly in fixed-line services, and rival mobile network operator Tunisiana - a joint venture of Kuwait's National Mobile Telecom (Wat-aniya) and Egypt's Orascom Telecom.