Pakistan plans auction of 3G licences in October - Routers

By Bilal Ansari (ku)

ISLAMABAD, July 28 (Reuters) - Pakistan plans to issue its first licences for third-generation (3G) mobile telecom services in October, hoping to generate nearly $1 billion through an open auction, government officials said on Thursday.

The fifth-largest cellular market in Asia -- behind China, India, Indonesia and Japan -- had more than 107 million mobile users in April, almost 65 percent of all Pakistanis.

"A committee of the cabinet has agreed in principle to launch 3G services as soon as possible without any conditions," a senior official of the Ministry of Information Technology, which is handling the project, told Reuters.

The Economic Coordination Committee is expected to green-light the auction in the first week of August. The auctions are expected to be held in mid to late October, another official said.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as they are not authorised to speak to the media, said the number of licences to be issued would depend on the availability of 3G spectrum.

"For instance, if we have 30 Mhz, it could be three licences of 10 Mhz each. If we have 20 Mhz, then it will be two licences," one official said.

The official telecommunication authority, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), will advise the ministry of the available spectrum in August.

Pakistan's existing operators include Mobilink, a unit of Egypt-based Orascom Telecom , Norway's Telenor and Warid Telecom, a joint venture between Abu Dhabi Group and SingTel Group, according to the PTA website.

Mobilink leads the market by 32.96 million subscribers, followed by Telenor at 26.06 million, according to PTA data. Other operators include Zong of China Mobile Communication Corporation and Ufone, owned by the Emirates Telecommunication Corporation Group, Etisalat .

The officials did not say if the licences would be offered to the existing telecoms operators, or include others. A PTA official said it would probably be only for those already operating in Pakistan. (Editing by Chris Allbritton and Will Waterman)

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Second Monthly WikiLeaks Central Competition | US State Department Cable Analysis

THEME

The second monthly WikiLeaks Central Competition 2011 will focus on soliciting analysis of one or more of the US State Department cables released by WikiLeaks.

Submissions may use one or more of the cables released on the WikiLeaks Web site on or prior to 11:59 p.m. July 31, 2011.

All sources used must be clearly identified when they occur and include the name of the source, and, when available, a hypertext link to the source content. Citations of cables MUST use the cable's "REFERENCE ID" and a hyperlink to the source document.

HOW TO ENTER

1.) If you do not already have one, register for a WLC account.

2.) Send an email to admin@wlcentral.org with the header: Competition: TITLE OF ANALYSIS by WLC ACCOUNT NAME. Insert your essay into the body of the email.

3.) See submission guidelines and rules below.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES AND RULES

1. Eligibility/topics. The Monthly WLC Competition is open to (i) any registered member of wlcentral.org except editors and WLC essay competition judges. Regular WL Central contributors, who are not editors or judges, may enter.

a. Submissions must focus primarily on theme of the month and can be any length. Submissions must be text based (we prefer html) and emailed to admin@wlcentral.org.

b. WL Central will have the right to publish the submission without payment to the author but with attribution to the author under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Please clearly indicate that your material is for publication and indicate the name you would like to appear as author. Submissions are allowed one hyperlink under the name of the author.

c. Content, previously submitted to an earlier monthly WLC essay competition, may not be again for subsequent competitions.

d. Any quotations or copyrighted material used must be properly identified. Failure to identify non-original material will result in disqualification. Each registered wlcentral.org account may enter only one entry for this month's competition. The submission must have a title.

e. Submissions can be written in any language.

2. Selection of winners. The winning essay will be selected by WL Central's editors based on (i) newsworthiness; (ii) supporting research; and (iii) organization and writing style. (iv) We will consider the essay's capacity to engender online discourse in the form of comments and retweets. The competition finalists will be published on WLC prior to the final selection. The competition winner will be notified on or about August 15, 2011, and an announcement of the winner will be sent via email to the winning entrant shortly thereafter.

3. Prize. A cash prize will be awarded for the winning essay ($US 100 US). WL Central may, in its discretion, decide to split prizes or award additional prizes.

4. Deadline for submission. All essays submitted for the competition must be received by WL Central by no later than 11:59 p.m. GMT, July 31, 2011.

5. In the event that none of the submissions are judged to be of suitable merit or unforeseen technical difficulties, WLC retains the right to roll the award to the next month's competition prize.

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