Maroc Telecom (IAM, ) is the main

telecommunications Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...

company in

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

. Currently employing around 11,178 employees, it is the largest telecommunications network in the country with 8 regional delegations and 220 offices present across Morocco. The company is listed on both the

Casablanca Stock Exchange The Casablanca Stock Exchange (; ) is a stock exchange in Casablanca, Morocco. The Casablanca Stock Exchange (CSE), which achieves one of the best performances in the region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), is Africa's third largest st ...

and

Euronext Paris Euronext Paris, formerly known as the Paris Bourse (), is a regulated securities trading venue in France. It is Europe's second largest stock exchange by market capitalization, behind the London Stock Exchange, as of December 2023. As of 2022, th ...

History

The origin of a Moroccan telecommunications project dates back to 1891, when Sultan

Hassan I ''Mawlay'' Hassan bin Mohammed (), known as Hassan I (), born in 1836 in Fes and died on 9 June 1894 in Tadla, was the sultan of Morocco from 12 September 1873 to 7 June 1894, as a ruler of the 'Alawi dynasty. He was proclaimed sultan after the ...

created the first Moroccan postal service. In 1913, the Moroccan

Postal Telephone and Telegraph A postal, telegraph, and telephone service (or PTT) is a government agency responsible for postal mail, telegraph, and telephone services. Such monopolies existed in many countries, though not in North America, Japan or Spain. Many PTTs have been ...

was established before a Dahir (King's

decree A decree is a law, legal proclamation, usually issued by a head of state, judge, monarch, royal figure, or other relevant Authority, authorities, according to certain procedures. These procedures are usually defined by the constitution, Legislativ ...

) related to the monopoly of the state of

Telegraphy Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...

and

Telephony Telephony ( ) is the field of technology involving the development, application, and deployment of telecommunications services for the purpose of electronic transmission of voice, fax, or data, between distant parties. The history of telephony is ...

was published. In 1967, Morocco placed the first

underwater An underwater environment is a environment of, and immersed in, liquid water in a natural or artificial feature (called a Water, body of water), such as an ocean, sea, lake, pond, reservoir, river, canal, or aquifer. Some characteristics of the ...

cable Cable may refer to: Mechanical * Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof * Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...

between Tetouan, Morocco, and

Perpignan Perpignan (, , ; ; ) is the prefectures in France, prefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales departments of France, department in Southern France, in the heart of the plain of Roussillon, at the foot of the Pyrenees a few kilometres from the Me ...

, France, through the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

. A few years later, in 1970, a transmission via

Intelsat Intelsat S.A. (formerly Intel-Sat, Intelsat) is a Luxembourgish-American multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons, Virginia, United States. Originally formed ...

was introduced. The

Telex Telex is a telecommunication Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communica ...

service was then automated in 1971 just before installing a

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

center in

Fes Fez () or Fes (; ) is a city in northern inland Morocco and the capital of the Fez-Meknes administrative region. It is one of the largest cities in Morocco, with a population of 1.256 million, according to the 2024 census. Located to the nort ...

. Due to the advancement of telecommunications around the globe, Morocco decided to create a new entity called the '' Office National des Postes et Télécommunications'' (ONPT) 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 A fiber-optic cable, also known as an optical-fiber cable, is an assembly similar to an electrical cable but containing one or more optical fibers that are used to carry light. The optical fiber elements are typically individually coated with p ...

. 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 (IAM) 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 Mass media include the diverse arrays of media that reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit information electronically via media such as films, radio, recorded music, or television. Digital media comprises b ...

company

Vivendi Vivendi SE (stylized in all lowercase) is a French investment company headquartered in Paris. It currently wholly-owns Gameloft as well as a number of investments in several companies, primarily involved in content, entertainment, media, and t ...

. The transaction amounted to 23 Billion

dirhams The dirham, dirhem or drahm is a unit of currency and of mass. It is the name of the currencies of Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Armenia, and is the name of a currency subdivision in Jordan, Libya, Qatar and Tajikistan. It was historicall ...

. On 4 January 2005 Vivendi acquired an additional 16% for 12.4 billion

raising its participation to 51%. In October 2007, the

CDG CDG may refer to: Transport * Charles de Gaulle Airport (IATA code), Paris, France * Chandigarh Junction railway station, Chandigarh railway station * ComfortDelGro, a Singaporean multinational land transport company * Shandong Airlines (ICAO code ...

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,

, would sell its 53% stake in the firm to

Etisalat e&, formerly branded as Etisalat, is an Emirati state-owned telecommunications company. It is the 16th largest in the world by subscribers. On 31 December 2021, Etisalat reported consolidated revenue of AED 53.3 billion and net profits of AED ...

for around $4.2 billion. In 2016, Maroc Telecom introduced fiber optics to the country with speeds up to 200 Mbits/s. In 2025, Maroc Telecom introduced a new fiber optic plan with speeds up to 1000 Mbit/s, being the first operator to introduce gigabit speeds to the country for consumers, while also removing their old 100 Mbits/s plan.

Activities

Land lines

It consists of the provision of public phones throughout Morocco. The fixed park reaches 1.6 million lines.

Mobile phones

Mobile service Mobile may refer to: Places * Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city * Mobile County, Alabama * Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S. * Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels * Mobile ...

s are provided via a

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

network. Maroc Telecom counted 33 million customers at the end of October 2012. Its network covers 97% of the Moroccan population. It also has 12.5 million customers in Mali, Gabon, Burkina Faso and Mauritania. It is one of the most profitable phone operators in Africa with a revenue of 2.2 billion euros during the first 9 months of 2012. Maroc Telecom launched

4G+ 4G refers to the fourth generation of cellular network technology, first introduced in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Compared to preceding third-generation ( 3G) technologies, 4G has been designed to support all-IP communications and broadban ...

in Morocco on July 13, 2015.

Projects and investments

On June 1, 2006, IAM launched the

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV), also called TV over broadband, is the service delivery of television over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Usually sold and run by a Telephone company, telecom provider, it consists of broadcast live telev ...

package deployed by

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinational corporationtechnology company in Longgang, Shenzhen, Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its main product lines include teleco ...

Technology via the

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over Copper wire, copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem ...

line. The service was the first of its kind in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

and the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

. In July 2006, Maroc Telecom signed with the

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

equipment company

Alcatel Alcatel SA was a French industrial conglomerate active between 1963 and 2006. It has roots to ''Compagnie Générale d’Electricité'' (CGE), a conglomerate founded in 1898 as an early state owned cable and telephone equipment company that lat ...

a contract for a

submarine communications cable A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the seabed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables were laid beginning in the 1850s and car ...

connection between Morocco and France. Maroc Telecom's aim is to upgrade the capacity of its services (i.e.

broadband In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...

services,

call center A call centre (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth spelling) or call center (American English, American spelling; American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, see spelling differences) is a managed capability th ...

s). The project cost €26 million and was named "Atlas Offshore". In December 2006, IAM invested in

Burkina Faso Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Ivory Coast to the southwest. It covers an area of 274,223 km2 (105,87 ...

’s

ONATEL Onatel Burundi (), is a state-owned telecommunications provider in Burundi. It provides the full range of services including fixed and mobile voice, broadband and internet. The company has struggled to compete with private internet, broadband and m ...

, acquiring 51% of its capital.''Maroc Telecom prend le contrôle d’Onatel''
- lefaso.net

References

External links

Maroc Telecom website

{{Authority control Mobile phone companies of Morocco Telecommunications companies of Morocco Etisalat Former Vivendi subsidiaries Moroccan brands 1998 establishments in Morocco Telecommunications companies established in 1998 Companies listed on Euronext Paris Companies in the MADEX Companies in the MASI Government-owned telecommunications companies Former government-owned companies