Afghan Ministry of Communications
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Afghan Ministry of Communications is an organ of the government of Afghanistan. Current communications minister is Amirzai Sangin.
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At the end of 2002, there were fewer than 20,000 phones working in all of Afghanistan, and only highly expensive satellite phones could complete calls among Afghanistan's six major urban areas. In early 2003, the Ministry of Communications with BearingPoint advisors developed a modern sector policy including a new Telecom Law adopted by Presidential Decree in December, 2005. An independent regulator was appointed June, 2006 and launched competitive tenders to license new telecom services.
The telecom sector lead economic reconstruction with four mobile service providers, which cover 75% of the country and have a total of 4,574,784 GSM subscribers. The mobile providers eployed over 2,400 towers in more than 250 of the largest urban areas. As of 2008 more than US $1,030 million in private investment and 50,000 new direct and indirect jobs were created by the sector. [1]
There are 15 Internet Service Providers (ISP) licensed and operating in 20 major urban areas. Afghan Telecom, an Afghan government telecom company, was incorporated in September 2006; an 80% stake of the company is being privitized in 2008.
Currently there are 44,979 landlines in Afghanistan.
