Maroc Telecom

The origin of a Moroccan telecommunications project dates back to 1891, when Sultan Hassan I created the first Moroccan postal service. In 1913, the Moroccan Postal Telephone and Telegraph was established before a Dahir related to the monopoly of the state of Telegraphy and Telephony was published.

In 1967, Morocco placed the first underwater cable between Tetouan, Morocco, and Perpignan, France, through the Mediterranean. A few years later, in 1970, a transmission via INTELSAT was introduced. The Telex service was then automated in 1971 just before installing a digital center in Fes.

Due to the advancement of telecommunications around the globe, Morocco decided to create a new entity called the Office National des Postes et Télécommunications to manage the industry. ONPT was responsible of the introduction of Analog Mobile Radiotelephony in 1987. Later on, in 1992, Morocco set up the first underwater optical fiber cable. Two years later, a GSM service was operational. The Internet was introduced in Morocco by ONPT in 1995.

After the publication of a telecommunications' decree, Maroc Telecom was eventually founded in 1998. The acronym IAM comes from its original Arabic name Ittisalat Al Maghrib. The name "Maroc Telecom" was adopted later for better international recognizability.

Privatization

On 20 February 2001, the Moroccan government sold 35% of Maroc Telecom's shares to French mass media company Vivendi. The transaction amounted to 23 Billion dirhams. On 4 January 2005 Vivendi acquired an additional 16% for 12.4 billion dirhams raising its participation to 51%. In October 2007, the CDG ceded, via its subsidiary Filpar Holding, 2% of Maroc Telecom to Vivendi in exchange of 0.6% of Vivendi's shares, putting the total shares owned by Vivendi to 53%.In 2006, the company reported a turnover of $2.67 bn. The custom base was established at 1.27m lines for the landline and at 391,000 lines for the ADSL.In July 2013, it was announced that the firm’s majority owner, Vivendi, would sell its 53% stake in the firm to Etisalat for around $4.2 billion.In 2016, Maroc Telecom introduced fiber optics to the country with speeds up to 200 Mbits/s.