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| Afghan Wireless
Communication Company (AWCC) is the product of founder Ehsan
Bayat's mission to reconnect Afghanistan with the wider world.
Bayat, an Afghan immigrant and a successful businessman in the
United States, began to realize his dream in 2001, after the
fall of the Taliban. By December 2001, his U.S. company,
Telephone Systems International, Inc. began seeking equipment
vendors willing to build a phone system in a country still
emerging from more than two decades of war.
Afghan Wireless would battle logistical problems, political
instability, physical insecurity and hours of environmental challenges to
launch its service. Despite hardships, on April 6, 2002, His Excellency Hamid
Karzai inaugurated the GSM network with an international call to Germany. The
system was launched in a mere seven weeks after the arrival of the first
equipment.
Afghan Wireless is now the largest provider of telecommunications
services in Afghanistan, with GSM mobile networks in 17 Afghan cities: Kabul,
Herat, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Jalalabad are just a few.
Afghan Wireless is licensed to provide
GSM service nationally until 2018. It is a joint venture
between Telephone Systems International, Inc. and the Ministry
of Communications.
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