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Technology Stocks : Lucent Technologies (LU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Duper who wrote (6555)	3/9/1999 4:43:00 PM
From: Jorj X Mckie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

Hey Sup!!! How's things man?? My views coincide pretty closely to Ben A.'s Message 8229191 LU broke a double top today, but I am still wary, especially since my internal indicators have not turned positive yet. JXM

To: Mark Duper who wrote (6555)	3/9/1999 11:23:00 PM
From: Diamond Jim	Respond to of 21876

03/09 13:03 Saudi seeking to nearly treble its phone capacity ABU DHABI, March 9 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia plans to almost treble the capacity of its newly privatised telecommunications sector to keep up with international standards, a board member of the Saudi Telecommunications Company said on Tuesday. "We currently have around 2.4 million fixed lines, 600,000 mobiles, 700,000 pager services and 6,000 data lines, which is very low in terms of international standards," said Fahad al-Mubarak, head of the Saudi telecommunications privatisation team and a board member of the Saudi Telecommunications Company. Mubarak said the aim was to reach a level of 25 to 30 lines per 100 people, up from the current level of about 12 lines, he told a conference on energy, infrastructure and finance in Abu Dhabi. He did not give a time scale. Riyadh privatised its telecommunications industry in May, setting up a company to run services to the public. Demand for telephone lines is growing rapidly in the kingdom, the world's largest oil producer and exporter. But the financing of large projects is difficult due to weak oil prices. Last month, six international firms were submitting final bids to the Saudi Telecommunications Company for a project aimed at adding two million lines to the network. The contract is worth around $5.5-$6.5 billion and is due to be completed in two years. The firms involved were Lucent <LU.N>, Alcatel <CGEP.PA>, Siemens <SIEG.F>, Japan's NEC Corp <6071.T>, Ericsson <LMEb.ST> and Northern Telecom <NTL.TO>. Saudi Arabia has not said how it is to finance the project. The country is feeling the pain of declining world oil prices, which have forced the government to scale back spending. A privatisation drive is a key element in Saudi attempts to diversify the economy. The third step of an Initial Public Offering (IPO) to allow the public to take shares in the company would take place in the next few years, he said. ((Tara FitzGerald, Gulf newsroom +971 4 607 1222, fax +971 4 626982, dubai.newsroom@reuters.com)) TLF FS