10.25.99 
An agreement has been initiated to bring a high-speed satellite Web connection to a remote village in the Middle East on the West Bank. The system, created by two leading U.S. high-tech companies, will be the first in the Middle East, and one of the first in the world, to feature a completely solar-powered, two-way satellite link to such an isolated site.  

eSAT Inc. and Greenstar Development World-Wide Inc. will install a small, 1.2 meter satellite dish on the roof of a school in Al-Kaabneh, a remote Middle East village south of Hebron, near the edge of the Dead Sea. The village currently has no central electricity, and no communications link of any kind to the outside world. But they do have a powerful solar power system, a computer and other state-of-the-art equipment, supplied earlier this year by Greenstar.  

SOURCE: U.S. Newswire 

JORDAN 
 
TELECOM 

11/17/99 
Jordan in Negotiations with France Telecom On Sale of JTC 
Jordan will open negotiations with France Telecom next week on the sale of a 40 percent stake in Jordan 
Telecommunications Company (JTC), Deputy Prime Minister Ayman al-Majali was quoted on Wednesday as saying.  Majali, quoted by the Jordan Times daily, said that a government decision was taken to initiate a dialogue with a France Telecom-led consortium, one of three international bidders which had expressed readiness to purchase the government's stake in JTC. 

"France Telecom was the only bidder to show up for further bidding negotiations and we needed a government decision to open talks with this group," Majali said. 

"The talks will start next week," he said. "Further clarification and surveys will be undertaken in line with forthcoming negotiations." 

Majali, also information minister, heads a ministerial committee handling JTC privatisation. 

Jordan's King Abdullah is currently on a four-day official visit to Paris where he discussed economic ties with French leaders and signed four agreements focusing mainly on Jordanian debt. 

Two of the three investor groups who submitted initial bids in early October met the government's minimum price sought for JTC sale - based on a higher-end of the scale median $1.27 billion asset evaluation of the profitable firm.  Their price offers were an identical $508 million. 

The first of the two groups was France Telecom joined by National Bank of Kuwait, National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia and Amman-based Arab Bank. 

Emirates Ein Investment Group, the investment arm of the United Arab Emirates' royal family which has U.S. giant GTE as technical partner, was the second group. 

The success of the telecommunications sale is a key part of IMF-directed structural reforms and is seen critical to boost Jordan's credibility among foreign investors. 

The government has been trying to attract outside investors to help revive its economy, weighed down by heavy external debt service burden. 

SOURCE: Reuters 
  

ISRAEL 
 
 
KUWAIT 

 
LEBANON 
 
TELECOM 
 
 

SUDI ARABIA 
 
TELECOM 

 
 
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES 
 
TELECOM 
 
 
 

Accesses: