The contract will involve the installation of 2 million new GSM lines over the first 12 months, with an option on expansion to 6 million lines during the following 24 months. The consortium is understood to have offered around 50 per cent of its revenues to TCI. The project is expected to be worth more than $400 million to the consortium.

The project will bring prepaid services to Iran for the first time. It will cover the installation of a complete network and provision of related services. Iran is moving to boost the size of its GSM network to 20 million lines by 2006, from about 2 million lines now. As well as the BOT work, TCI will also carry out an expansion of the network on conventional postpaid contract lines and is moving to appoint a second GSM operator.