Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, April 7 / Trend H.Hasanov /
The Turkmen Communications Ministry signed a contract with Huawei Technologies and Nokia Siemens Networks to further increase the Altyn Asyr national mobile communication operator's capacity in 2G and 3G standards, the ministry said on Thursday.
The number of customers exceeded 2.4 million after MTS ceased its activity in Turkmenistan in December 2010. Altyn Asyr became a monopolist on the market. It operates the Turkmentelecom state-owned enterprise. The number of subscribers is about 500,000 people.
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov stressed at a recent governmental meeting that the poor organization of the Altyn Asyr mobile operator's work resulted in low efficiency.
He instructed the organization of work at an international level. The president called for immediately taking the necessary measures to solve existing problems with organizing the high-quality work of Turkmen mobile operators.
Berdimuhamedov recently ordered the transfer of mobile services to private companies, as well as to privatize Altyn Asyr.
Turkmentelekom reported that the company will implement a series of projects in 2011.
The operator's network will be developed in CDMA with an additional increase in capacity up to 50,000 subscribers.
