Among the major projects held up by the personnel change are a $75 million programme to upgrade the public switch telecom network (PSTN) and a marine fibre optic cable project linking the country with several neighbours. 'Negotiations are under way with Jordan and Kuwait on establishing fibre optic links,' former minister Al-Abaidi told the Sixth Arab Telecom & Internet Forum in Doha in early June. 'With Iran, we agreed to establish a fibre optic link - which would have been the first direct connection since the 1970s - but the Americans made difficulties. The link with Saudi Arabia has been sabotaged. The ministry has employed some 3,000 guards for the fibre optic network but still it is attacked on a weekly basis.'

Progress has been swifter on extending GSM services to the local population. The three groups of operators awarded licences covering the northern, central and southern regions began rolling out services in March and will be permitted to expand nationally when coverage has been extended to 80 per cent of their base regions (MEED 10:10:03). 'A new competition will be launched when the two-year licences run out,' said Al-Abaidi. 'The interim governing council has been under pressure from operators to issue a fourth licence immediately but we have resisted, as the three operators are already being asked to run on a narrow profit margin and a new operator would disrupt the service rollout. However, there is talk of offering a 3G [third generation] licence.'

The postal service also comes under the Communications Ministry's remit, although there are plans to hive it off into an independent entity. 'Many post offices were bombed during the war because they doubled as telephone exchanges,' he said. 'We have allocated $40 million to repair buildings and are working to sort out the postcode system.' Out of Baghdad's 22 main telephone exchanges, 12 were destroyed during the US-led invasion.