Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Iraqi phone system still disabled

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 07:07:58 -0400

Iraqi phone system still disabled
Frustration grows over lack of infrastructure repair

By Jim Krane, Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Before the war, Baghdadis who needed an ambulance simply dialed
122.

"We needed only five to 10 minutes to pick up the victim and get him to the
hospital," said Dr. Sabah Baker Jaber, who oversees the city's emergency medical
services for the Iraqi Ministry of Health.

Now it takes an hour or so -- to walk or drive to the nearest neighborhood
emergency station then hope for an idle ambulance. If the case is urgent, the
results are often tragic.

"If there's a cardiac attack, the patient can die," Jaber said. "Eighty percent of
our work depends on communications."

The American bombardment of Baghdad pulverized about a dozen of the capital's 25
central telecommunications switches, almost completely knocking out telephone
service.

The 20 phones in Jaber's central dispatching office died on March 29.

Since the war, few Baghdadis kept the ability to make international calls. Some
others' phones work, but only for calls within their neighborhoods. The majority
sit silent, like the twin red and white phones on Jaber's desk, awaiting months of
major infrastructure repair that has yet to begin.

The troubles extend well outside the capital. In Basra, the country's
second-largest city, the telephones work only for local calls.

The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority plans to restore the Iraqi network's
spotty prewar service, tackling just part of a giant telecommunications repair job
that was estimated before the war at $1 billion over seven to 10 years.

An outline drawn up by the U.S. military envisions carting away the rubble
covering the destroyed switching stations and connecting temporary digital
switches to the underground phone cables, which are believed to be intact, said
Col. Bill Kern of the U.S. Army's 354th Civil Affairs Brigade, which is monitoring
the project.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has already issued contracts to
clear rubble at six of the 11 most critical switching stations, Kern said.

It's a big job. In the Azamiyah neighborhood, a steel-lattice radio tower lies
like a toppled sequoia atop homes next to the flattened network building.

"Until you've dug all that stuff off the top, you don't know what the condition
is," Kern said. He guessed it would take months before Baghdadis recoup some use
of their phones. Kern had no information on cost of the repairs or length of the
contract.

In the interim, U.S.-based telecommunications company MCI has built a cellular
network in Baghdad. So far, only about 10,000 U.S. military leaders,
reconstruction officials and aid workers have been issued phones, which augment
their radios and satellite phones.

For everybody else in this city of 5 million, communications are done in person or
not at all.

Jamal al-Din, 42, owner of one of Baghdad's ubiquitous ice cream parlors, says he
shuttles between his home and shop to solve problems he previously handled via
telephone.

He's also sent a brother to stay in Jordan to ship supplies, because he can no
longer order them by phone.

But al-Din's business tribulations pale in comparison to those of his personal
life. On June 2, his grandmother died. By the time he found out, she'd already
been buried. Before the war, al-Din called to check on his grandmother, who lived
on the other side of Baghdad, every few days. But with the phones down, he hadn't
spoken to her for two weeks.

"All of this I couldn't do because the phones didn't work," said al-Din, a large
man with a thick beard, slouching on a divan that lines the walls in his cavernous
living room.

U.S. officials in Iraq stress that the country had few phones to begin with.

The phone network was bombed in the first Gulf War. It languished in disrepair
largely because of trade sanctions. In 1990, Iraq had 5.3 phone lines for every
100 people, but by 1998 there were only 3 per 100, according to the International
Telecommunications Union. Neighboring Iran has 16; Syria has 11. The United States
has 67.

While the U.S. will handle some of the repairs, Kern said most of the work is
someone else's business.

"We're not going to rebuild Iraq," Kern said. "Iraqis are going to rebuild Iraq."

Or, perhaps, private companies will do the rebuilding.

Kern said he expects Iraq's interim government, scheduled to be sworn in sometime
after mid-July, to use its authority to sell off the country's telecom network and
other chunks of the state-run economy.

With so many key aspects of society needing repair -- from physical infrastructure
to government agencies -- privatization could take some pressure off the fledgling
Iraqi government.

"That's what I expect to see. Bring in large corporations and sell off a lot of
stuff," Kern said. "Put that money in other parts of the country."

The Western telecom sector will be only too happy to oblige. Officials from
France's Alcatel -- which built much of Iraq's current network -- and U.S.
companies like Lucent Technologies, Motorola and AT&T have said they're eager for
contracts.

But the first telecom to land one is MCI, the new name for WorldCom, which melted
into bankruptcy last year after revealing a massive accounting fraud. To the
consternation of many inside and outside the United States, MCI landed part of a
$45 million short-term communications deal from the Pentagon.

But MCI's budding cellular network is off limits to average Iraqis, who are angry
about the destruction of their phone infrastructure.

Al-Din figures the U.S. government should reimburse him for the $600 cost of a
Thuraya satellite phone he uses to keep in touch with his sister and her husband
in Saudi Arabia. The satphone is one of the few devices that can be used to call
inside and outside Iraq.

"The Americans destroyed the phones here," al-Din said, hooking his thumb in the
direction of the bombed-out al-Mamoun phone exchange down the block. "The
Americans should pay for it."

http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87%257E11271%257E1470896,00.html?search=filter

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