Government orders mobile telephone operators to pay over US $70 millions Sudan Radio Service Juba, 18/7/2012 - The government has asked Telecommunication companies operating in the country to pay about seventy million US dollars for new licenses. This amount is payable by phone operating companies such as Vivacell, MTN, Zain, Gemtel and any other interested telephone network operators. However, some companies have complained that the amount is exorbitant considering the number of subscribers each company has and the range of their coverage in the country. Responding to the concerns, the undersecretary in the ministry of telecommunication and postal services, Engineer Juma Stephen told SRS FM on Wednesday that the 70 million dollars fee is reasonable, although not the final agreement. “The seventy million was something proposed for the telecom operators, for example, MTN paid for their license given by Khartoum one hundred and fifty million Euros, so that amount was for the whole country. And in little arithmetic -if we are saying South Sudan is one third of the whole country in terms of area of population, then one third of this figure is about fifty million Euros. This fifty million Euros is equivalent to seventy million US dollars. That was the little arithmetic, but it is not something final, there is a committee now working, and this committee is formed from the ministry of telecommunication and the ministry of commerce, and other economists. They are now trying to assess the market and come up with a new fee –which is not yet out. So there is nothing imposed now,” said Mr. Stephen. All mobile operating companies in the country were issued licenses in Khartoum just before South Sudan became independent.
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