Egypt's OT seeks 100,000 N Korean subscribers from May

By Jonathan Wright

CAIRO, March 12 (Reuters) - Orascom Telecom, the fourth biggest Arab mobile phone operator by market value, will launch North Korea's first mobile phone service in May, aiming to sign up 100,000 subscribers initially, the CEO said on Wednesday.

Egypt-based Orascom Telecom (OT) ORTE.CA (ORTEq.L: Quote, Profile, Research) won the first mobile phone licence in North Korea in January. CEO Naguib Sawiris told a conference call with analysts that the service would start in three major cities in the reclusive communist state and the company would then assess the impact.

"We want to see first how fast we will sell that and what kind of ARPUs (average revenue per user) we are going to generate and how the system will be there. Will they allow everybody to take the line?" Sawiris said.

"The licence says all of that should happen. But we are opening up a country that was closed for centuries so we need to be quite cautious," he added.

Sawiris said he was "astonished" how quickly the North Korean authorities wanted the service to start and he had high hopes for business in the country.

"We firmly believe that in the next three or four years we will be having a couple of million subscribers there and we will be seeing ARPUs in the range of $12 or $15 (a month)," he added.

Sawiris said that of the $400 million the company plans to invest in North Korea over the next three years, about $200 million would probably come in the first year, with $100 million in each of the two subsequent years.

Orascom Telecom is flush with cash after selling off its interests in Iraq for $920 million and shares in Hutchison Telecommunications International (2332.HK: Quote, Profile, Research) for $761 million.