Baghdad phone service back

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From combined dispatches

BAGHDAD -- Baghdad's residents by the end of March will be able to make calls from across the Iraqi capital as repairs are completed on 11 telephone exchanges destroyed by U.S. bombing during the war last year.

Al-Mamoun, the last exchange to be replaced, was opened yesterday, and Iraqi technicians have begun hooking up tens of thousands of subscribers without telephone service for almost a year.

"This has been a giant achievement, considering the security situation. We expect all subscribers to be hooked back up by the end of March," Telecom Minister Haidar al-Ebadi said during a ceremony to open al-Mamoun.

A U.S. force of tanks stood guard around the complex, Baghdad's main communications site.

Lucent Technologies supplied the switches for the $50 million project, managed by Bechtel, which was awarded major U.S. contracts in postwar Iraq.

Telephone service will be free until a new billing system is set up.

Baghdad, a city of more than 5 million people, had 540,000 land lines before the war. Phone services covered less than 4 percent of the Iraqi population, as economic sanctions prevented access to maintenance parts and expanding the network.

Mr. al-Ebadi said the Iraqi Governing Council's goal is to make phones available to more than 10 percent of all Iraqis by the end of the year.