The 2nd contract of TDF signed

Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT) is responsible for provision of telecom services throughout the country.

 Based on the Afghanistan telecom market economic requirements, MCIT had forecasted that development of telecom services started from big cities and will be developed to the rural areas of the country step by step. It should be mentioned that telecom companies include the remote areas in the end of their extension list for telecom networks due to logistics difficulties, expensive cost of investment and receipt of less income related to provision of telecom services.

MCIT there fore established Telecom Development Fund (TDF) to cover the rural and remote areas of the country with telecom services on time. Based on terms and conditions of the issued licenses to the telecom companies, each company pays 2, 5% of its net revenue to the mentioned fund quarterly, and about 2 billion Afghani ( 40 forty million US$)  has been collected for this fund so far.

Afghanistan Telecom Regulatory Authority (ATRA) of MCIT prepared and finalized universal access policies for telecom services and procedures for usage of the (TDF) amount for rural areas in 2008. Based on that, the first project of universal access for provision of telecom services in the rural and remote areas of the country was launched in 29 July, 2009 and the project is being implemented.

Based on the development plan of universal access services in the rural and remote areas of the country, ATRA submitted the second project of universal access for tender notice in 24 October, 2009, and its offer opening took place in 24 November, 2009. Consequently, Afghan Wireless Communication Company bidding was announced the winner for bidding of second project of universal access.

Currently, all legal processes for bidding of the second project of universal access have been completed and agreement of the second project of universal access is entered in to agreement with Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC) based on that. Based on this project, twenty (20) districts which have not benefited from provision of telecom services yet will be covered with telecom services by TDF in Kunar, Paktia, Paktika, Badakhshan, Farah and Urzgan provinces.