Highway Africa News Agency (Grahamstown)
Laeed Zaghlami
11 January 2008
Algeria's minister of ICT, Mr Boujemaa Haichour has appointed Mr Mouloud Djaziri as Algerie Telecom's (AT) a new director general, one week after he accepted the retirement of the director general of Mobilis Mr Hachemi Belhamidi and his replacement by Mr Lounis Belharat.
In his statement of appointment, Mr Haichour pointed out that "these changes are necessary to boost the ICT public sector and enable it to face rules of competitiveness and efficiency."
Thus, "Algerie telecom's privatisation will be re-launched some time this year, affirms the minister, once we have a sound assessment of the process."
However, according to industry analysts, the privatisation strategy and policy are not still clear enough to have the backing up of AT management and workforce.
In his first interview with the media, the newly appointed director general of Mobilis set up three priorities:'Improving the quality of technical coverage, innovating the customers relationship and strengthening service diversity', "these actions are our main concerns that guide, our future work," states Mr Belharat.
Regarding 3G technology, he said that "there is no problem, we have 3G platforms awaiting since 2 years now and they can be operational soon.? However, he explains, ?the difficulties reside less on how to interoperate with present 2G technology than on investments, license authorisation and economic outputs."
Until December 2007, Mobilis affirms Mr Belharat, has built up to 4 200 relay stations that cover 97% of the Algerian territory of 2.385.581 square kilometres. According to the country's telecommunications indicators, almost 10 million people are subscribed to Mobilis services with a turn over of 40 billion Algerian dinars (600 millions US dollars), he underlined.
At the partnership level, Mobilis says Mr Belharat, will adopt different partnership strategies with equipments suppliers and companies.
Laeed Zaghlami HANA correspondent in Algiers - Algeria
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