"Kuluulu" In mobile-telephone licence bidding process?

Warid Telecom International, an Abu Dhabi-based company, will contest the mobile-telephone operating license issued by Ghana's National Communications Authority (NCA) to Globacom Nigeria.

An official announcement by the NCA on June 20 that Glo won the bid for a sixth mobile-telephone license was expected to put the issue to rest, but officials of Warid, one of the two companies short-listed for the license, says the process was not transparent.

The company's officials said on Monday that they equally qualified to pay the minimum reserve of US$50 million to the NCA, but they were not given the opportunity.

Globacom, one of the leading mobile phone operators in Nigeria, made public a letter from the NCA naming it the winner of the bid for a sixth mobile-telephone operator license ahead of the NCA's official announcement.

Some of the 11 companies that bid for the license include TransAtlantic Industries, Global Trade Imex, Teylium Telecom International and TechnoEdge Ghana.

Already operating in the country are Kasapa, MTN, One Touch and Tigo. Western Telecom Systems, which is already operating a fixed facility, is yet to launch a mobile telephone network, months after it received the country's fifth such license.

Warid officials say they will "fight the unfair bidding process" and that if the NCA was not interested in a competitive bid, it should not have invited them.

The minority in Parliament has condemned the bidding process, with its ranking member for communications, Haruna Iddrisu, proposing to question the process on the floor of Parliament.

Iddrisu said in an interview that the NCA must explain how it arrived at the minimum bidding reserve of $50 million, as the price is inexpensive compared to a similar bidding process in Nigeria, which pegged the fee between $245 and $285 million. He is also requesting that the NCA and the Ministry of Communications apprise the House of the technical and financial capacities of the companies that bid for the license.

Akoto Osei, minister of state at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, has implied that other bidders did not meet the technical requirements.

Meanwhile, Globacom Nigeria has said it will invest about $2 billion in Ghana over the next five years.