Sacel

cancelled

In May 1996, Sacel Madagascar S.A. was granted an exclusive 15-year licence to operate a Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) service by the Madagascar Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. In December of 1997, Sacel started operations within the capital city of Antananarivo. The company was the third mobile operator after Telecel and Antaris. Sacel was a joint venture between Malaysian company Samen Holding Berhad (66%) and the state-owned fixed-line incumbent operator Telecom Malagasy (34%). The project required an initial investment of US$20 million (RM50 million). In December of 1996, Samen Holding arranged for finance facilities of US$9.2 million guaranteed by Finnish Export Credit with a maturity of 18 months. Ericsson Radio Systems AB won the contract to install the network. Sacel Madagascar targeted to initially have 3,000 subscribers for its mobile telephone service. After five years, it hoped for 60,000. However, Sacel had to shutdown on October 25, 2001 after getting its license revoked by national regulator OMERT. The company was accused of not having settled the US$2.6 million worth of arrears overdue to the Customs and Fiscal Administration within the alloted time.