On the commercial side, French-owned Alcatel was chosen by the U.N. in December 1999 to provide full cell phone coverage to the region within three months. Alcatel was able to get around ITU's sovereignty issue by using Monaco's international phone code. But almost a year after the contract was announced, towers are still going up, and the partial system is already overloaded. Alcatel's system currently is designed to handle 10,000 users, but actually has around 45,000. Mobtel still operates in Serbia.
Competition is stiff.
I had to switch to Alcatel because it's the only thing working. Back on the ground, residential service is being restored, line by line, by Kosovo Albanians who were kicked out of government jobs by the former Serbian regime in 1991. Since the telecom industry has evolved rapidly in the last 10 years, workers are woefully unprepared for their tasks, says Agron Dida, a recent PTK director. Then subscribe to the IAW E-Mail Alert. Openwave Be a part of the communications revolution.