Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Reconnecting Iraq - MCI to Build Wireless Network in Iraq

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 05:14:04 -0400

MCI to Build Wireless Network in Iraq

MCI has received a Defense Department contract to build a small wireless network to serve military personnel, aid workers and other officials in Iraq. The GSM network would serve about 5,000 to 10,000 people. MCI said it is on track to complete the network next month. MCI does not have a wireless network in the U.S., but it did participate in setting up a wireless network in Afghanistan.  The U.S. government is one of MCI's largest customers.

WorldCom says to build wireless network in Iraq

Thu May 15, 2003 05:26 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA, May 15 (Reuters) - Bankrupt telephone company WorldCom Inc. WCOEQ.PK MCWEQ.PK said on Thursday it won a contract to build a wireless telephone network in Iraq as the post-war country tries to rebuild and restore communications and other basic services.
WorldCom, which is changing its name to MCI, said it was on track to have a small wireless
network operating in June. It declined to comment on the location of the network or size of the contract.
A sources familiar with the contract, however, said the network would provide service to about 5,000 to 10,000 people in Baghdad. Media reports pegged the contract's value at about $45 million.
It is unclear whether Ashton, Virginia-based WorldCom would build other communications networks in Iraq since the Bush administration said it would leave such decisions to the incoming Iraqi government.
Bombing destroyed much of Iraq's feeble communications network and military personnel and aid workers have relied on costly and cumbersome satellite telephones.
Even before the war, Iraq's communications resources were scarce. The Washington Post said the country's prewar telephone network served only three out of every 1,000 people.
Some of WorldCom's network equipment started arriving in Iraq this week, but the rest must
wait in line to be shipped along with food, medical supplies and other humanitarian aid, the company said.
The company, which also helped build a similar wireless network in Afghanistan, declined further comment. WorldCom does not operate a wireless network in the United States and it exited the wireless re-sale business last year.
The Baghdad network will use so-called GSM technology -- the global system for mobile
communications -- which is the wireless standard used in Europe and most of the world, the
source familiar with the contract said.

In March, Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from southern California, urged the U.S.
government to build a wireless network based on the CDMA (code division multiple access)
standard developed by San Diego, California company Qualcomm Inc. QCOM.O

Issa argued that if GSM technology is deployed in Iraq, much of the equipment used to build the wireless telephone system would be manufactured in France, Germany, and elsewhere in western and northern Europe. Qualcomm is one of Issa's biggest corporate donors.
WorldCom, which filed the world's biggest bankruptcy last year, is the largest communications provider to the U.S. government and serves more than 75 government agencies.

Some rivals and activist groups, such as the Gray Panthers, have lobbied Congress that the
federal government should not do business with WorldCom in the wake of its $11 billion accounting scandal.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&oi=news&start=0&num=2&q=http://reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml%3Ftype%3DbondsNews%26storyID%3D2752960
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MCI to Begin Rebuilding of Iraqi Phones
U.S. Awards Contract For Small Network

By Christopher Stern
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 15, 2003; Page E01

American telephone giant MCI has been awarded a contract to build a small mobile phone network in Baghdad as the United States takes an initial step to rebuild basic communications in a city ravaged by two wars and 11 years of severe economic sanctions.
A working phone system is largely absent in much of the Iraqi capital, apart from limited grids of wired networks. Many Westerners, including military personnel, aid workers and journalists, have had to rely on satellite phones, which typically do not work indoors. Even before the most recent U.S. bombing, Iraq's telecommunications resources were scarce and unreliable.
Analysts estimate that the prewar telephone network was capable of serving only three out of every 1,000 people.
Given the rudimentary state of telecommunications, there is growing impatience in Iraq with the pace of the work to install a new system. Sources at the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance have begun complaining that MCI has fallen behind schedule in getting even a relatively small system of 5,000 to 10,000 phones up and running.
Sources said the Defense Department, which awarded the contract, never specified a completion date but the company had informed the government that it should be able to finish by next month.
MCI spokeswoman Natasha Haubold said the company has been waiting in line to ship the necessary equipment to Iraq but given the priority of other humanitarian aid, such as food and clothing, the first delivery of its gear was not completed until last week.
"We are on schedule for implementation in June," Haubold said.

MCIis a division of WorldCom Inc., which filed for bankruptcy protection last year after disclosing a massive accounting scandal. WorldCom expects to emerge from bankruptcy later this year and operate under the name MCI.
The U.S. government has continued to be the Ashburn-based telecommunications company's biggest customer throughout the current scandal and bankruptcy process. Although it no longer operates a wireless network in the United States, MCI played a role in getting a similar mobile phone network into operation in Afghanistan.
Sources declined to comment on the value of the Baghdad wireless contract.
Initially, telecommunications companies such as Lucent Technologies Inc., M
otorola Inc.  and Qualcomm Inc. had hoped that the U.S. government would award a far larger contract to rebuild most of Iraq's telecommunications infrastructure. But Bush administration officials earlier this month decided to leave that decision to the incoming Iraqi government. Analysts have estimated that it may cost at least $900 million to put a state-of-the-art telecommunications network in place.
Speculation about a major telecommunications contract began to build in March when Rep.
Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) attacked the Defense Department's plans even before they were disclosed.

Issa called on the Pentagon to award the contract to a company that would use a wireless standard developed by Qualcomm, a telecommunications firm based near his Southern California district. Issa then introduced a bill that would have effectively required any company that won the contract to use Qualcomm's Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) standard.
But sources confirmed yesterday that MCI's network would use the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) standard that is more widely used around the world, particularly in countries that neighbor Iraq.
Issa had been particularly critical of GSM because it was developed in Europe by a consortium of countries including some nations, such as France, that had opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
"Obviously, we are disappointed that they didn't use a predominantly U.S. technology," said Issa's chief of staff, Dale Neugebauer.
Neugebauer questioned the wisdom of awarding the contract at the expense of U.S.  taxpayers.
"There is tremendous commercial interest in building a cell-phone system in Iraq and very little need for investment by the U.S.  government," said Neugebauer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57040-2003May14.html

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MCI Gets Iraq Contract
BY WIRELESS WEEK STAFF
MAY 15, 2003

MCI has been awarded the contract to build a new wireless telephone network in war-torn Iraq, the company confirmed today.
The network, worth a reported $45 million, is slated to be in place by June, says an MCI spokeswoman. MCI declined to provide details of the network, referring questions to the U.S. Department of Defense. Defense officials couldn't be reached for comment before deadline.
The network reportedly would be GSM-based and provide U.S. officials, troops and international aid workers with communications to coordinate their reconstruction efforts in the country.
The network has been a bone of contention among several U.S. vendors vying for it, with accusations arising from Congress that awarding the contract to a GSM-based service provider would be tantamount to giving support to foreign nations such as France, as GSM is heavily used in Europe. That battle, initiated by Rep. Darrell Issa, R.-Calif., has largely cooled. Qualcomm, a CDMA technology provider largely competing against GSM, is based in Issa's home district.

http://www.wirelessweek.com/index.asp?layout=document&doc_id=119329&verticalID=34&vertical=Business+and+Finance&industry=

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Reconnecting Iraq
By Cynthia L. Webb
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Friday, April 18, 2003; 9:36 AM

Will Wi-Fi -- wireless networking technology -- be the answer to reconstructing Iraq's devastated telecommunications infrastructure?
"By using Wi-Fi," USA Today reported this week, "parts of Iraq could skip the build-out of traditional phone and cable networks altogether. The situation is similar to how cell phone technology enabled huge swaths of the Third World to avoid regular land-line phone systems. Wi-Fi equipment makers such as Cisco Systems, Proxim and Nomadix are talking to government agencies and non-profits about possibilities for Wi-Fi in Iraq."
The industry site, broadbandreports.com, has a slew of active message postings about the USA Today piece and the prospect of Wi-Fi in Iraq, including a fair share of skeptics. One message poster wrote:
"First, this wireless thing is not for the

Iraqi people in general. Most Iraqis can't afford or have no use for this tech, period.  This Tech is for the American companies that are 'rebuilding/conquering' the Iraqi economy (mainly oil, and yall know it)." Another person wrote: "Till those pesky UN sanctions are lifted most companies cannot do any business with Iraq. Kind of hard to build out a wireless network without equipment or cash to pay for it."

o USA Today: Wi-Fi Could Let Iraq Skip Steps To Leap Into Broadband

In addition to Wi-Fi aspirations, Wired reported on April 10 about a London-based effort to help deliver basic Internet services in Iraq. According to Wired: "The grassroots proposal seeks to fund the reconstruction of Iraq's Net infrastructure by selling Internet addresses ending in .iq -- the country-code suffix in Iraq's domain name.  Due to trade sanctions and other issues, no dot-iq domains are currently active. But the charity project's sponsors, which include British ISP Omega, say the domains -- with the country-code suffix that connotes high intelligence -- could be auctioned off to worldwide Internet users for a hefty sum. 'We think there's a lot of goodwill toward the Iraqi people and a desire to help them get the benefits of an open Internet,' said Ben Fitzgerald-O'Connor, leader of the project known as the Committee for Information Technology Reconstruction in Iraq."
The nonprofit, London-based CITRI has its own Web page. According to the site, the group "aims to raise money to invest in IT & Communications systems in Iraq, so as to make freedom of information and communication - an everyday right that free people take for granted in the west - possible in the new emergent Iraq ." CITRI links to a .iq status workpage of a U.S.-based networking professional. The techie site Slashdot.org posted a link to the article and more than 600 messages on the topic.
Satellite Surge While much of Baghdad and other parts of Iraq are still grappling with restoring basic services like running water and electricity, the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime has led to a boom in a once-outlawed business: the sale of personal satellite dishes. "I sold 30 yesterday and about 100 today. Maybe I'll sell 500 tomorrow," entrepreneur Jassem al-Saadi told Reuters yesterday from his Baghdad shop. "A dish and equipment sells for $300 a set, a small fortune for most in Iraq, where a civil servant might earn the equivalent of just $10 a month, topped up by cash from second or third jobs. But, such is the premium for uncensored information and entertainment in Iraq as it emerges from 24 years of iron-fist rule under Saddam Hussein that dozens of people are ready to shell out their savings," Reuters reported.

o Reuters: Iraqis Rush For Forbidden Fruit: Satellite Dishes

Some of the new satellite TV programming that is available to Iraqis is being beamed and created by coalition forces. The Wall Street Journal explained in an April 11 article: "If the Iraqi people want proof that they are living in a new era, they need only turn on their television sets. Thursday, on the channel that until earlier this week carried Iraqi state TV, the U.S. and British governments began beaming in a new service called Towards Freedom. The prime-time highlight: speeches by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, subtitled in Arabic, telling Iraqis that better days are coming. ... British officials promise that some of the programs will be entertaining and others will contain views critical of the U.S.-led coalition. For instance, the British plan a daily review of the London press, including the city's many Arabic-language papers."

o The Wall Street Journal: Allies Give Iraqi TV a New Face, Including Western Self-Criticism (Subscription required)

The Washington Post reported yesterday about the positive impact of the Iraq war on the ailing satellite industry. "As we've seen from Iraq, the use has been phenomenal," Herschel Shosteck, chairman of Wheaton, Md.-based industry research firm the Shosteck Group, told the newspaper. "As the situation in the Middle East continues to unfold, military, nongovernment organizations, the press and the Iraqis will depend on mobile satellite providers like Iridium, Globalstar and ICO," he said.

o The Washington Post: With War, Satellite Industry Is Born Again

And The Winner Is ...

Speaking of reconstructing Iraq, Bechtel National, the huge, San Francisco-based engineering and construction management firm, yesterday nabbed a contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development to rebuild Iraq's roads, electrical grids, airports, sewer and municipal water systems and other infrastructure. Several other big government contractors got smaller awards for Iraq work, but Bechtel was the big winner -- the contract it won could be worth more than $600 million.

o The Washington Post: Contract for Rebuilding of Iraq Awarded to Bechtel

o The San Francisco Chronicle: Bechtel Wins First Contract To Rebuild Iraq

o The New York Times: Bechtel Has Ties in Washington, and To Iraq (Registration required)

o London's The Guardian: Bechtel Wins Contract Prize

Sky Eyes

As the war in Iraq draws to a close, military planners are surely reviewing what tactics worked and didn't work in the U.S.-led effort to dismantle Saddam Hussein's regime. One technology that proved to be indispensable to the coalition forces: unmanned aerial drones, built to snap pictures, eavesdrop on enemy communications and even attack enemy positions. "Never before has the military used so many unpiloted aircraft for such a diverse array of missions. For example, the Air Force for the first time flew several Predators simultaneously in Iraq," The New York Times writes today.  "Predators have also flown surveillance on every major mission of the war, from the two airstrikes against Saddam Hussein to the rescue of Pfc. Jessica D. Lynch, beaming back live color video images (black-and-white at night) so precisely with a 1,500-millimeter zoom lens that analysts can discern uniformed soldiers from civilians from more than three miles away. About 15 Predators are operating in Iraq -- roughly a third of the Air Force's total fleet -- and they have flown more than 100 missions in the war, many shrouded in secrecy, military officials said."

o The New York Times: In the Skies Over Iraq, Silent Observers Become Futuristic Weapons (Registration required)
o The Arab Times: U.S.-Led Forces Exhibit Lightning Speed, Technological Prowess
o U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet: RQ-1 Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Telecoms Still Not Cheering

There may be a surge in war-related satellite business and potential technology work in rebuilding Iraq, but the U.S. telecom sector is still not over its dot-com bust hangover. Companies like Motorola have billions of dollars of cost shaving to do to help their company's bottom line. And the woes of bankruptcy-laden WorldCom-cum-MCI have not helped the sector's confidence. The Chicago Tribune yesterday reported on how weakening demand for cell phone services has hit Chicago area-based Motorola hard. "Among Motorola's challenges is maintaining sales and profit momentum in cell phones -- by far its biggest business, contributing 40 percent of sales in the first quarter. Analysts are increasingly disturbed about trends in the large and important China market, where Motorola, a pioneer and the undisputed market leader, is losing sales along with other foreign competitors to upstart Chinese manufacturers," the newspaper wrote. Morningstar Inc. analyst Todd Bernier told the paper: "They're struggling. There's just no other way to look at it."

o The Chicago Tribune: Telecom Sector Troubles Aren't Going Away
o Reuters via Forbes: Motorola Facing More Competition In China

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A50336-2003Apr18&notFound=true

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