Turkcell files Irancell suit

The Turkish mobile operator Turkcell has filed an arbitration lawsuit against the government of Iran for allegedly blocking its acquisition of a stake in Iranian mobile operator Irancell. A consortium led by Turkcell was approved as the winning bidder in a tender to take a 51% stake in the newly created national mobile licensee Irancell in February 2004, but the deal with Turkcell ran into difficulty, with conservative Iranian politicians unhappy with the involvement of a Turkish firm in one of the country’s main communications networks. Turkcell had been seeking a majority stake in Irancell but the government pushed through legislation in April 2005 to limit its stake to 49%; the cellco says it then faced a number of other blocking tactics and it was left with little choice but to walk away from the deal. MTN of South Africa took its place in the consortium in October 2005 and Irancell has gone on to take second place in the country’s mobile market, with 3.72 million subscribers at the end of September 2007, according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms database.