ORASCOM, one of Egypt’s successful telecommunications company has dismissed rumours that it is for sale. According Mr Hassan Kabbani, as long as Algeria remains an emerging economy ICTs will remain central to its development so the sale of ORASCOM is out of the question, he said.
African countries like Algeria are still experiencing a great deal of growth with regards to telecommunications services.
“Our intention is to open up our capital once the Algiers exchange market becomes developed”, he underlined. In the meantime, explains Mr Kabbani, “we intend to diversify and extend existing activities to housing, petrol, chemistry and banking sectors.”
Orascom Telephone Algeria is the first private mobile telephone operating under the Djezzy brand which obtained its operations licence in 2001 with US$737 million as investment money.
Since its launch, the Djezzy group has achieved outstanding performances. It is a leader with 14 millions subscribers compared to 8 million to the publicly owned Mobilis and 4 million to the Qtel Nedjma company.
Meanwhile, the Director general of OTA states that Djezzy has managed to recruit 3,700 employees in which 3,300 are highly qualified and 20 000 are subcontract jobs for a period of 6 years. He adds “our network consists of 20 000 sale points, 920 customers councillors and 320 roaming partners in 134 countries.”
Djezzy covers 97% of the Algerian territory (2.385;582km2) obtained 400 million US dollars in benefits in 2006, and that money was reinvested in the development of its services.
Mr Kabbani told HANA that Djezzy does not only provide telecommunications services but also innovates to meet customer demands such as Internet banking, money transfer, games, music and news.
Since its release to the Algerian ICT market, OTA has been active in promoting a heavy advertising campaign on Radio, TV and newspapers in addition to its sponsoring activities in sports, social and humanitarian areas.
