After a long secretive deal, Egypt-based mobile phone operator Orascom Telecom (OT) has bought local operator Sheba Telecom for $60 million -- $50 million in cash and about $10 million in debts it has repaid -- OT said.

"OT has purchased 100 per cent of the shares of Sheba Telecom in Bangladesh," the company said in a statement recently.


The transaction was complete on Thursday and does not require any additional regulatory approvals, it said.

OT intends to invest $250 million in Sheba over the next few years to develop and expand its GSM (Global System for Mobile Communica-tions) network.


"Bangladesh is a highly attractive market for mobile services due to its large and highly concentrated population, low penetration of telecommunications services and high growth in mobile subscribers," it pointed out.


OT already has operations in Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq, Tunisia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) Chairman Syed Marghub Murshed said the BTRC has no objection to the deal. "BTRC has no problem if anybody legally acquires anything."

Sheba officials could not be reached for comment.


The small operator has about 60,000 subscribers in and around Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet.

Bangladesh now has more than three million cell phone subscribers and around one million subscribers of fixed phones provided by state-owned Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB), which also plans to launch 250,000 cell phones by December this year.


Earlier, local firm Integrated Services Ltd. (ISL), joint venture partner of Sheba Telecom, had bought the stake of Malaysian Technology Resources Industries Bhd (TRI) in the cell phone company for $15 million.

The companies later reached a consensus following a long arbitration in Singapore. TRI, a concern of Malaysian state-owned Telekom Malaysia, had signed the settlement agreement with the ISL on June 15.


The settlement involved TRI selling its Sheba stake to ISL for $15 million and a liability of $10 million with Standard Chartered Bank in Dhaka, officials said.


One of the issues TRI and ISL had disputed was the size of each of their equity stakes in Sheba.