BBC World EditionThe US plans its own mobile tender phone licences in Iraq by the US authorities in Iraq could bar many of Europe's biggest telecoms companies - and almost all those in the Middle East - from bidding.
The rules - issued by the coalition authorities ahead of a bidders' conference in Jordan on Thursday - ban governments from "directly or indirectly own(ing) more than 5% of any single bidding company or single company in consortia".
That rules out - among others - Orange and T-Mobile, two of Europe's biggest operators, because the French and German governments still own significant stakes in their parent companies.
Experts said the rule could give US companies an advantage - as could another rule which demands evidence of five other contracts or licences held.
US licences are handed out on a regional basis, so even a company operating only in the US could well have a handful of licences to put on its application.
Most other countries issue them only on a national basis, therefore meaning that bidders would have to have operated in five separate countries. ---
The rules also mean that neighbouring Arab companies may well be out of the running - including Batelco, the Bahraini telecoms company which until earlier this week was running an unofficial GSM-based mobile network in Baghdad.
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