The Ongoing Saga of Unitel, Hitsunitel and the Third License
The Saudi HITS company seems rather flaky, perhaps non-existant or otherwise dubious, the HITSUNITEL deal is convoluted. Omantel declined to resub its bid a while ago:
SANA’A, NewsYemen
The Trade Court in the capital Sana’a has ordered to stop giving the license of UNiTEL, the third operator of GSM service in Yemen, to any other operator.
The court obligated in its order on Sunday the Ministry of Telecommunications to terminate all measures of changing or transferring the license given to UNiTEL to Hits UNiTEL, until a further notice.
“The judicial order has stopped illegal attempts to confiscate the license of my client, UNiTEL company, and giving it to another party,” the lawyer of UNiTEL Jamal al-Adimi told NewsYemen.
“It is not allowed, according to law, to impound a license legally given to an investment company through a legal tender to give it for another one,” he said.
While the government said UNiTEL could not fulfill the financial commitment, the UNiTEL company, which won an open and official tender on October 2006 to be the third operator of GSM service in Yemen, said it had settled all its financial commitments to the state ($149 million) so it had got the license.
