Tunisia’s Ministry of Communication Technologies and the Digital Economy (Ministere des Technologies de la Communication et de l’Economie Numerique, Mincom) has accepted financial bids from Ooredoo Tunisia, Tunisie Telecom (TT) and Orange Tunisia for 4G licences, and expects to allocate the concessions by the end of the month. Ooredoo offered the highest bid of TND160.000 million (USD77.96 million), followed by Orange with TND156.331 million and TT with TND155.001 million; no other bids were submitted. The trio have two weeks to provide bank guarantees for the bid amount, whilst the allocation of the licences is expected to take around four weeks.
Attempting to steal a march on its competitors, Orange has already launched a promotion offering customers free 4G USB modems and routers when they trade in their old 3G devices. Both Orange and Ooredoo, meanwhile, have confirmed that their networks are ‘ready’ for 4G.