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Iraqi Telecommunications Upgrades Impart Hard Lessons

Iraq's technological telecommunications leap into the 21st century has left the country short on experts available to work in traditional communications areas. The success of reconstruction efforts in the country demonstrates that citizens are hungry to embrace mobile communications devices. But ushering a nation with little to no technology toward state-of-the-art telecommunications also revealed that introducing modern communications could be a misstep that winds up costing the United States millions of dollars.

The telecommunications sector in Iraq is considered to be a reconstruction success and a foundation of national stability. Iraq remains a broken country, but a rapidly developing telecommunications infrastructure enables food and fuel distribution, emergency services, health care and government coordination, often in hostile conditions. It is a growing source of jobs and careers for the numerous graduates of Iraq’s technical colleges and universities and the portal to the global Internet and social network communities for Iraq’s youth and the next generation of leadership.

Controlled by civilian government officials, regulators and private investors, the infrastructure maintains elements of both command and free-market economics. Similar to most reconstruction activities in Iraq, progress is erratic and conditioned on many unpredictable factors. 

In 2004, reconstruction officials decided that the U.S. government would fund the building of a new MamounTelecomCenter as a modern landmark in Baghdad and major telecommunications center. Today, after numerous delays, the building is near completion and the only discernible sign of major building construction in Baghdad. The building is scheduled to be topped out and new switching and transmission systems installed throughout 2009.

Additional exchange facilities are being built in Baghdad and throughout Iraq to ensure a balanced and secure system. Provincial Reconstruction Teams working closely with the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and Army Corps of Engineers officials in the Gulf Region Division have helped to arrange Iraqi funding for new centers in several cities.

Buried fiber optic infrastructure is being extended slowly but steadily throughout Iraq. Incomplete network management and fault reporting systems as well as insurgent attacks continue to make it difficult to get current data on capacity and uptime. Long-term plans for long-haul infrastructure envision a redundant series of large interconnected metropolitan ring networks covering the seven largest population centers in Iraq. These are being overlaid with three donor-funded microwave networks from the Turkish border to Basra and the Kuwaiti border in the south.

The networks should become operational in 2009. A Japanese-funded network from Mosul to Basra along the TigrisRiver received additional financing to complete several partially built transit towers that were delayed by insurgent attacks. A World Bank network from Jordan to Baghdad with branches to Kirkuk and Basra was delayed for several months in 2008 because of contractual issues with vendors.

In 2003, mobile phones did not exist in Iraq. Today, three licensed carriers serve approximately 10 million to 12 million customers. Accuracy on customer numbers is impossible because each of the three companies—Zain, Asiacell and Korek—report customer and traffic statistics differently. However, it is indisputable that a national mobile service handles Iraq’s population and will reach, like most countries, nearly a 100 percent teledensity.

It may seem churlish to criticize such success. Still, the economic security of Iraq may have been served better by assuring that the national fiber infrastructure was completed, or at least fully funded, before soliciting bids for cell phone services.

The lesson for future reconstruction activities is that the higher pay of private cell phone companies sucked engineering talent from national long-distance provider ITPC at a time when its engineers were needed to rebuild the long-distance and metropolitan fiber networks. The landline network is the core national backhaul network for all long-haul services, including mobile phone networks.

In stable countries such as the United States or Germany, the introduction of cell phones led to a gradual migration away from fixed-line to mobile operations while the core network was kept intact. In Iraq, the fast move to mobile communications damaged the long-haul telecommunications and data development.

Early introduction of private mobile services has cost the U.S. taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars. Approximately $200 million per year still is required for telecommunications equipment and satellite services for the U.S. traffic that does not require the high levels of security and normally would be carried at much lower cost over national fiber networks. Also, the lack of a properly managed core fiber infrastructure outside of Baghdad has limited the development of advanced data services such as telemedicine, banking clearances, inventory and manufacturing control systems. 

At the Iraq Telecoms 2008 conference in October, the two largest wireless local loop (WLL) providers, Itisaluna and Kalimat, reported large customer migrations from the global system for mobile communications (GSM) to fixed wireless services as service becomes available. Several cities have significant code division multiple access (CDMA) WLL rollouts providing fixed telephony and Internet access service.

However, a huge training requirement remains. A 15-year gap in technical knowledge and management capability is evident in Iraq. Since 2004, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have spent more than $20 million in telecommunications and information technology management and technical and regulatory capacity building in Iraq. 

Robert Fonow, managing director of RGI Limited, served as a senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of communications.

Read an expanded version of this article in the February 2009 issue of SIGNAL Magazine, in the mail to AFCEA members and subscribers February 2, 2009. For more information about purchasing this issue, joining AFCEA or subscribing to SIGNAL, contact AFCEA Member Services.