August 27, 2010
On June 9, 2010, Law 18/2010, which reorganizes Syria's
telecommunications sector, was enacted by presidential decree and then
published on the Syrian
Official Gazette on June 23.
Thanks
to this law, a newly established institution, the Telecoms Supervisory Authority (T.S.A.) will
be constituted as the telecoms sector’s regulatory body. Before this
reorganization, the regulatory power pertained to the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment (S.T.E.),
which at the same time was allowed to run the country’s landline network. Under
the new framework, the S.T.E. will be replaced by a new institution, the Syrian Telecommunications Company
(S.T.C.),
which will continue to operate as the landline monopolist company. The S.T.C.
will be required to abide by the Company Law and the government (the Syrian Treasury)
will be its unique stakeholder (100 percent ownership).
The
Ministry of Communications and Technology will appoint the T.S.A. members
and the authority will start implementing the new regulatory functions at
the beginning of 2011. The T.S.A. will have the power to grant new licenses,
including: license fees; revenue sharing models; and the methodologies for
selecting the operators (tender or other procedures) of the different
sub-sectors (landline, mobile, radio waves, etc.). When granting new licenses,
the T.S.A. will mandatorily consider the positions of companies already
operating (having currently infrastructure and employees) in Syria as telecom
operators.
The
importance of this law is linked to the fact that the S.T.E. is one of Syria’s
most profitable state-owned companies. In fact, it is the second largest
contributor to the Syrian Treasury after the Syrian Petroleum Company. In 2009,
the S.T.E. had revenues of 73.1 billion Syrian pounds (with an 18
percent increase). The current two Syrian mobile operators, Syriatel and
M.T.N., in 2009 enjoyed total revenues of $ 1.02 billion and $829.8 million
respectively. Since mid-2009, the S.T.E. has gotten 50 percent of the annual
revenues of Syriatel
and M.T.N.
according to the terms of the build-operate-transfer (BOT) contracts under
which the two companies are allowed to operate in Syria.
The
two companies strongly complain that BOT contracts impede them to well
invest in new expensive infrastructure, which eventually after some years
will be handed over to the government. In addition to this, BOT contracts
have always blocked the possibility of listing both Syriatel and M.T.N. Syria
on the Damascus Securities Exchange. The reason is that this kind of contracts
does not permit to evaluate the assets of the involved companies. Splitting the
old S.T.E. into two different bodies — the T.S.A. (the new telecoms regulatory
body) and the S.T.C. (the new landline monopolist company) — should permit to
reform more easily the telecoms sector.
In
particular, the T.S.A. — not being involved in the telecoms market as an
operator and not receiving direct economic resources from Syriatel and M.T.N.
as it used to happen with the S.T.E. — should be capable of modernizing the
sector through an increase in the level of competition in this way
protecting the rights of consumers. This could be achieved by
transforming Syria's BTO contracts into classic licenses and introducing a
third mobile license. For example, it is important to remember that the Syrian
mobile market is not a saturated market. According to the Ministry of
Telecommunications, out of a population of around 20 million Syrians and
more than 3 million expatriates, Syria has 10.4 million of mobile subscribers,
including pre-paid cards. It is esteemed that there are in Syria at least four
million of untapped potential new subscribers. But with the current scarce
competition (high mobile prices coupled with bad services) it is difficult to
initiate these four million people to the mobile market.
The
new law should be a sort of innovative model in order to limit government
participation in relevant Syrian industrial sectors. In other words, in Syria
from now on, it should be implemented a process oriented toward an increased
role played by the private sector in industries previously 100
percent controlled by the state. Probably, the government will continue to
have a controlling position, but the management should be linked more
consistently to the private sector.
For
more information please see: BACCI, A., When a New
Licensing Regime for Mobile Operators in Syria?, June 2010