Sonny ---The bids have to submitted by FEB 15---doubt they would award the contract until they had a chance to review the bids :1/24 04:30 Saudi sets new Feb deadline for telephone project
MANAMA, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has set a new February deadline for firms
to resubmit bids for a telephone project that will add two million lines, doubling the
capacity of the creaking network, an industry source said on Sunday.
The Saudi Telecommunications Company in Riyadh had previously asked international
firms to submit their offer by November 30 -- giving them only one month's notice.
"We have submitted our offer before, and we are again asked to submit a new offer by
February 15," one official at Ericsson <LMEb.ST> in Riyadh said.
"All the companies have been invited to submit new offers for this tender. The deadline
is February 15."
Six international firms are vying for the contract, worth about $5.5-$6.5 billion and due
to be completed in two years.
They are Lucent <LU.N>, Alcatel <CGEP.PA>, Siemens <SIEG.F>, NEC Corp
<6701.T>, Ericsson and Northern Telecom <NTL.TO>.
Demand for telephone lines in Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil producer and
exporter, is growing rapidly, but financing of massive projects is difficult because of
weak oil prices.
The kingdom, with a population of around 18 million, has just over two million telephone
lines, industry sources said.
They would not say how the project was to be financed.
They said the introduction of the Internet in Saudi Arabia in January had put more
pressure on existing telephone lines.
In 1994, AT&T Corp <T.N> won a $4 billion deal to double the telephone network in
Saudi Arabia. The project was partly financed by Chase Manhattan Cor
Sorry for the confusion
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