Emirates Telecom Corporation (Etisalat) has said it plans to enter the Iraqi market before the end of the year.
Etisalat chief operating officer Ahmad Julfar said his company was in talks to acquire an existing operator which has a licence covering a limited area in Iraq, and Etisalat planned to later extend its services across the country. He did not name the operator.
“Iraq has a lot of potential as there is unavailability of fixed-line telephones because of war conditions,”Julfar told Reuters, without giving further details.
In August 2007, Etisalat decided not to bid for an Iraqi mobile phone licence. Iraq later sold three licences for $3.75 billion to Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications (Zain) - a regional competitor of Etisalat - Asiacell and Korek, which all already ran networks in the country.
Asiacell is an affiliate of Qatar Telecommunications Company, another regional competitor of Etisalat. In December, Zain agreed to pay $1.2 billion for Orascom Telecom’s Iraqi mobile telephone unit.
Zain already had an Iraq network through its MTC-Atheer unit. Abu Dhabi-based Etisalat, which lost its monopoly at home with the launch of services by du in 2007, operates in countries including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and several African countries.
Meanwhile, Etisalat introduced three new packages with a combination of the Etisalat  Payment Gateway (EPG) for credit card payments and BizDirect – an online direct debit payment service.
This move is aimed at offering online retailers and eCommerce merchants a cost effective and powerful ePayment service.
The new packages will give potential and existing eCommerce merchants the opportunity to expand their online initiatives with almost 50 per cent reduction in transaction charges and a certain number of free transactions per month to encourage new merchants to try the service.
Etisalat is also expanding its network outside the UAE with merchants in Saudi Arabia and Qatar now being able to avail themselves of Etisalat ePayment services.