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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, April 08, 2002

Afghanistan's 1st Commercial Mobile Phone Network in Operation

Dozens of people were still crowding in front of the gate of the sales center at the Ministry of Communication in central Kabul waiting to buy a mobile phone, nearly one hour after the normal closing time at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.


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Dozens of people were still crowding in front of the gate of the sales center at the Ministry of Communication in central Kabul waiting to buy a mobile phone, nearly one hour after the normal closing time at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

Three and a half months after the establishment of the Afghan interim administration, the first commercial wireless communications network went into formal operation in the country's capital on Sunday.

One set of mobile phone costs as much as 350 U.S. dollars, a price too dear for most people in Afghanistan, but there were still many people, such as businessmen and foreign nationals, rushing to get one on the first day of the network's official operation.

The GSM network, run by the Afghan Wireless Communications Company (AWCC), an Afghan-U.S. joint venture, offers people the first non-satellite links between the war-torn country and the outside world, since the lines with Pakistan were disconnected during the fall of the Taliban.

The network also provides national and international calling, voice mail, SMS text messaging and data services, with international calls to the United States, Canada, Western Europe and Pakistan at 56 U.S. cents per minute.

About 100 sets of mobile phones were sold during the first day, a salesman at the sales center said. More sales centers would be set up in the city in the next few days, he said.

The 50-million dollar network is initially available in Kabul, but will expand to cover the city of Heart, western Afghanistan, by the end of April, and the southern city of Kandahar, the eastern city of Jalalabad and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif in May.

In early February, a mobile phone network was set up in Kabul jointly by a Swedish company and the World Food Program, but its service was available only to members of United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations and the interim administration.


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