Yemen was to issue on Tuesday a tender for a third operator of the Global System of Mobile telephony (GSM 900), the country's Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology said on Monday.
The minister, Abdul-Malik al-Moalimi, told Saba the third license comes in line with a decision taken by the Cabinet last year with the aim of providing the mobile service along with the current two GSM providers.
He said neither the current GSM operators (Spacetelyemen and Sabafon) nor the Public Telecommunications Corporation or their partners would be allowed to compete for the new license.
The ministry set August 2 as the deadline for receiving the offers.
The government would have 25 per cent of the new venture's shares, while 20 per cent would be allocated for the public, and 55 per cent for the winner investor.
In September 2004, President Saleh Ali Abdullah Saleh launched Yemen Mobile that works on the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system. Yemenis considered the first Arab country to use the CDMA.
