One Country, Two Digital Systems: Can Yemen Reunify Its Communications Economy?

Part 1 of the Bridge Connect Insight series: Yemen’s Digital Reconstruction

Executive summary

Yemen’s telecommunications challenge is often described as one of damaged towers, unreliable power, limited broadband and insufficient investment. All of these problems are real. But they obscure a more fundamental obstacle: Yemen no longer operates as a single communications economy.

Years of conflict have divided institutions, duplicated authority and exposed operators to competing regulatory, fiscal and security demands. Control over ministries, state-owned telecommunications entities, international gateways, spectrum, licensing and taxation has become entangled with the country’s wider political division. Networks may still connect Yemenis, but the system within which those networks operate is fragmented.

This distinction matters.

Physical infrastructure can be repaired relatively quickly when finance, equipment and access are available. Institutional fragmentation is harder to reverse. Licences may be disputed. Taxes may have been paid to different authorities. Spectrum may have been assigned or used under incompatible arrangements. State-owned assets may have competing boards, accounts and management structures. Operators may carry liabilities incurred under one authority that another refuses to recognise.

A post-conflict telecommunications strategy cannot therefore begin with the assumption that Yemen will simply return to its pre-war institutional model. Nor should it wait for complete political reunification before attempting to improve national connectivity.

The more practical objective is functional interoperability before full institutional reunification.

That means establishing a transitional framework through which networks can interconnect, customers can communicate and transact across different areas, operators can invest with greater confidence, and common technical rules can be applied—even where the final political and institutional settlement remains unresolved.

Yemen does not immediately need one fully unified telecommunications institution. It first needs one functioning national communications environment.

That environment should be built around five priorities:

1. A national telecommunications continuity agreement

2. Protected interconnection and infrastructure-sharing arrangements

3. A verified national register of spectrum, licences and sector assets

4. Transitional recognition of operators’ rights and obligations

5. An independent mechanism for technical coordination and dispute resolution

Handled well, telecommunications could become one of the first sectors in which Yemen demonstrates the practical benefits of national cooperation.

Handled badly, it could reproduce the country’s political fragmentation in its digital infrastructure for another generation.

Yemen’s telecommunications problem is institutional before it is technological

Telecommunications is not simply another commercial sector. It is part of the machinery through which a modern state, economy and society function.

Mobile and internet networks support banking, remittances, humanitarian operations, public administration, education, healthcare, logistics, media and personal communication. They also generate tax and licence revenues, create employment and connect domestic businesses to customers and suppliers.

In Yemen, these functions have had to continue through prolonged conflict. Networks have therefore become both essential infrastructure and contested strategic assets.

The sector historically developed around three interconnected layers:

• International connectivity and gateway functions

• National backbone and fixed-network infrastructure

• Mobile and other access networks serving consumers and businesses

Control over the gateway and backbone layers is especially important. They influence not only where traffic flows but also the cost, quality, visibility and resilience of communications.

Retail market share tells only part of the story; control of the underlying infrastructure can be more strategically significant.

Conflict disrupted this system without replacing it with a coherent alternative. The World Bank has described Yemen’s international connectivity as constrained by unreliable links, political problems and institutional fragmentation, including the effective division of the national international-gateway operator, TeleYemen. Its analysis also identifies the weaknesses created by dependence on a narrow set of international routes and institutional arrangements.

The fragmentation extends beyond one company. Ministries, public institutions and state-owned enterprises have been duplicated or brought under different centres of control. Private operators have faced conflicting instructions, disputed licensing conditions and overlapping fiscal demands.

As early as 2020, the World Bank reported that private telecommunications operators were being required to follow instructions and pay taxes to authorities in both Sana’a and Aden. It also noted that the legal, policy and regulatory framework was no longer being applied consistently.

Subsequent analysis from the Sana’a Center has described how telecommunications institutions and government-owned enterprises were duplicated during the conflict, while the different authorities sought to maintain control over the sector and its revenues.

The result is not merely administrative inconvenience. It affects almost every important decision an operator or investor might make:

• Who has the authority to issue or renew a licence?

• Which spectrum assignments are legally valid?

• Where should regulatory and licence fees be paid?

• Can an operator move equipment between areas?

• Who authorises international capacity?

• Which entity controls national backbone access?

• How are interconnection charges determined?

• Are contracts signed by one authority enforceable elsewhere?

• Can revenues, equipment and staff move across territorial lines?

• Which historical liabilities will survive a political settlement?

Until these questions become more predictable, capital will remain cautious and operators will favour short-term survivability over long-term transformation.

Why “reunification” is the wrong starting point

A future political agreement may envisage unified national institutions. That does not mean telecommunications can or should be recombined through a single administrative act.

After years of division, each part of the sector will carry its own records, contracts, employment commitments, debts, supplier arrangements, tax claims and technical decisions. Some information will be incomplete. Some claims will be disputed. Other decisions may have been legally valid under one authority but rejected by another.

Attempting immediate institutional reunification could therefore create three serious risks.

1. Operational disruption

A rapid transfer of control could interrupt services if management authority, bank accounts, supplier contracts or operating permissions are suddenly challenged.

Telecommunications networks require continuous operational decisions. Fuel must be purchased, sites accessed, software licences maintained, international capacity paid for and faults repaired. A politically attractive institutional announcement is of little value if it paralyses the operating machinery behind the network.

The first rule of sector reunification should therefore be: do not allow institutional restructuring to reduce service continuity.

2. A struggle for control rather than a programme of reform

Telecommunications assets generate revenue and confer strategic influence. Any reunification process will consequently attract competing claims over leadership appointments, procurement authority, cash flow, international gateways and network information.

If the process begins by deciding who controls everything, it risks becoming an extension of the political contest.

A better starting point is to decide which functions must work consistently across Yemen, regardless of who temporarily administers individual institutions.

3. Restoration of an outdated market structure

Reunification must not mean recreating the pre-conflict system without examining whether it remains appropriate.

Yemen’s future communications environment will include mobile broadband, cloud services, digital payments, satellite connectivity, cybersecurity, data governance and potentially new wholesale and infrastructure providers. The regulatory framework must accommodate these developments.

Starlink has already demonstrated how quickly new technology can alter Yemen’s connectivity landscape. Its arrival created an alternative means of accessing the internet, particularly in areas poorly served by existing networks. It also generated disputes over legality, sovereignty, security, privacy and control.

The lesson is wider than Starlink. Technology will not wait for Yemen’s institutional settlement. If formal regulation remains fragmented or unresponsive, new services will develop through informal channels, foreign platforms and local workarounds.

The objective should therefore not be to reconstruct the old telecommunications order. It should be to create a legitimate, adaptable and nationally interoperable one.

Functional interoperability before institutional reunification

Yemen can learn from other divided or post-conflict systems, but it should not attempt to copy any single external model. Its political structure, operator landscape and state-owned assets are distinctive.

A useful guiding principle is nevertheless available:

Separate the functions that must be national from the institutions that may remain transitional.

Some telecommunications functions cannot operate effectively when divided. These include:

• National numbering

• Radio-frequency coordination

• Emergency calling

• Interconnection standards

• Cross-network quality requirements

• International technical representation

• Cyber-incident coordination

• Protection of critical infrastructure

• Competition safeguards

• Consumer roaming and service continuity

Other functions can temporarily remain decentralised or be delivered through existing institutions, provided they follow agreed common rules.

This distinction allows progress without requiring the parties to settle every ownership, constitutional or political question at the outset.

A transitional architecture might therefore consist of three layers.

Layer one: national technical rules

A common set of rules would cover numbering, spectrum coordination, interconnection, infrastructure protection, quality measurement and emergency communications.

These rules should be narrow, transparent and technically grounded. Their purpose would not be to determine the final shape of the Yemeni state. Their purpose would be to keep the national communications system functioning.

Layer two: continued operational autonomy

Existing operators and institutions could continue managing their networks and workforces during the transitional period.

They would not have to surrender all operational control before cooperation begins. In return, they would accept common technical obligations, information standards and consumer protections.

Layer three: staged institutional settlement

Questions involving ultimate ownership, governance, historical liabilities, staffing and the consolidation of state-owned entities would be addressed through a separate, slower process.

This sequencing reduces the danger that difficult political or financial disputes block urgently needed technical cooperation.

Five building blocks for a national communications environment

1. A National Telecommunications Continuity Agreement

The first requirement is not a new telecommunications law. It is a limited agreement that protects essential communications during the transition.

The agreement should commit relevant authorities, state institutions and licensed operators to:

• Maintain civilian communications services

• Avoid politically motivated service interruption

• Protect critical network sites and backbone routes

• Facilitate access for authorised repair teams

• Permit essential equipment and spare parts to move

• Preserve existing numbering and routing arrangements

• Maintain emergency and humanitarian connectivity

• Share information about major outages and cyber incidents

• Refrain from unilateral technical measures that could destabilise other networks

This would be a practical confidence-building mechanism.

Telecommunications lends itself to such an approach because the benefits are visible. When interconnection improves, faults are repaired and coverage becomes more reliable, citizens and businesses experience the results directly.

The agreement would need external support, but it should remain Yemeni-led. International organisations could provide convening, verification and technical expertise without assuming operational control of the sector.

2. Protected interconnection and infrastructure sharing

A divided telecommunications market can still behave like a national system if its networks interconnect reliably and fairly.

Interconnection is therefore one of the most important early priorities. Operators should be able to exchange traffic under published technical and commercial rules, with clear procedures for measuring volumes, settling charges and resolving disputes.

Where trust is weak, an independent clearing mechanism could reconcile inter-operator traffic and payments. This would reduce the possibility that disputed invoices become grounds for restricting service.

Infrastructure sharing should also be expanded.

Yemen cannot afford unnecessary duplication of towers, fibre routes, power systems and transmission facilities. In low-income or difficult-to-reach areas, several competing networks may not be commercially sustainable. Sharing passive infrastructure - and, in carefully defined circumstances, active network components - could improve coverage while conserving capital.

However, infrastructure sharing must not become a mechanism through which the owner of a strategic asset can discriminate against competitors. Access terms, service levels and pricing principles should therefore be transparent.

Particular attention should be paid to:

• National and regional fibre routes

• International landing and gateway facilities

• Mobile towers and rooftop sites

• Microwave transmission

• Data centres and network facilities

• Site power and renewable-energy systems

• Rights of way

• Cable ducts and utility corridors

A post-conflict infrastructure-sharing code could deliver benefits before more comprehensive competition law and regulatory institutions are in place.

3. A verified register of spectrum, licences and sector assets

Yemen cannot reconcile what it cannot see.

The country therefore needs an independently verified baseline covering spectrum use, operator rights, licences, major assets and existing sector obligations.

This should not begin as an exercise in deciding which claims are legitimate. It should begin as an evidence-gathering process.

For spectrum, the register should identify:

• Frequencies assigned or used

• Geographic areas of use

• Technologies deployed

• Original assignment documents

• Subsequent renewals or amendments

• Fees claimed and paid

• Sources of interference

• Spectrum that appears unused or underused

For licences, it should record:

• The issuing authority

• Original and revised terms

• Duration and expiry

• Permitted services

• Coverage obligations

• Payments and guarantees

• Material disputes

• Changes made during the conflict

For major public-sector assets, the register should include:

• Legal ownership

• Current operational control

• Physical location

• Technical condition

• Revenue-generating role

• Associated contracts and liabilities

• Evidence supporting competing claims

The evidential standard matters. Records should be supported, where possible, by contracts, invoices, bank records, network data, photographs, geographic coordinates and physical inspection.

The register should not be controlled by an operator or by an institution with a direct financial interest in its conclusions. A jointly appointed technical secretariat, supported by independent specialists, would be more credible.

The output would become the factual foundation for later decisions about relicensing, compensation, restructuring and investment.

4. Transitional recognition of rights and obligations

Operators will not make significant long-term investments if they believe their licences, assets or contracts may later be declared invalid.

At the same time, automatically recognising every decision taken during the conflict could legitimise irregular arrangements or impose unfair liabilities on a future national government.

Yemen therefore needs a transitional recognition regime.

Under this approach, existing operating rights would continue temporarily, subject to:

• Compliance with common technical rules

• Continued provision of service

• Disclosure of relevant ownership and contractual information

• Cooperation with the asset and licence register

• Adherence to consumer and competition safeguards

• No presumption that transitional recognition determines final legal validity

A standstill period could prevent abrupt licence withdrawal while claims are reviewed. Operators would gain operating certainty, but not an unconditional endorsement of every historical arrangement.

Historical financial claims should be separated into categories:

• Undisputed operating liabilities

• Supplier and employee obligations necessary for continuity

• Tax and regulatory claims supported by evidence

• Duplicated or overlapping government claims

• Related-party or politically exposed contracts requiring review

• Claims that should be referred to arbitration or a settlement mechanism

This categorisation would be more useful than trying to resolve every disputed amount through political negotiation.

The objective is continuity with accountability - not continuity without scrutiny.

5. An independent technical coordination and dispute mechanism

A fully empowered national regulator may eventually be desirable. Establishing one immediately, however, would raise difficult questions about legal authority, appointments, location, funding and enforcement.

A smaller transitional body may be more achievable.

A Yemen Telecommunications Coordination Council could initially have a limited mandate covering:

• Interconnection

• Spectrum coordination and interference

• Numbering

• Infrastructure sharing

• Quality and outage reporting

• Emergency communications

• Technical disputes

• Publication of sector data

• Coordination with international technical organisations

Its composition would be crucial. It should include relevant public institutions, operators and independent technical members, with carefully designed safeguards against any one participant dominating decisions.

The council should not run networks, award procurement contracts or take over commercial management. Its legitimacy would come from a narrow mandate, transparent procedures and technically credible decisions.

Disputes could follow an escalating process:

1. Direct negotiation between the affected parties

2. Technical mediation through the council

3. Independent expert determination

4. Arbitration for material commercial disputes

All significant determinations should be documented. Transparency would reduce the scope for informal intervention and build a body of precedent for a future regulator.

The ITU’s wider work on digital development emphasises that strong institutions, accountability, consultation and dispute-resolution mechanisms are essential to successful digital transformation. It also shows that regulatory capacity across parts of the Arab region continues to lag global benchmarks.

Yemen will not be able to create regulatory maturity overnight. It can, however, begin creating the behaviours on which credible regulation depends.

What should happen to the state-owned telecommunications entities?

Some of the most difficult decisions will concern state-owned organisations controlling fixed infrastructure, international connectivity and other strategic assets.

Three broad options are possible.

Immediate consolidation

This would attempt to combine duplicated entities and restore a single management structure quickly.

It offers symbolic clarity but carries substantial operational and political risk. Without verified accounts, assets and liabilities, consolidation could simply combine unresolved disputes inside one organisation.

Continued separation

Existing institutions could continue operating independently for an extended period.

This reduces immediate disruption but risks entrenching parallel systems, duplicated cost and incompatible investment. Temporary separation can easily become permanent.

A federated transitional model

A more practical approach may be to preserve separate operating structures temporarily while placing defined national functions under common governance.

For example, relevant entities could maintain their staff and regional operations but participate in shared arrangements for international capacity, backbone access, technical standards, procurement transparency and financial reporting.

Over time, audited information and operating performance would support decisions on consolidation, separation, wholesale structures or partial private-sector participation.

The final answer should not be predetermined. Yemen may eventually benefit from separating policy, regulation, wholesale infrastructure and retail services more clearly than it did historically.

What matters initially is that strategic infrastructure becomes accessible on fair terms and is not used to block competition or national interoperability.

A phased route from fragmentation to a functioning market

Phase 1: Protect continuity — first 100 days

The immediate priorities should be:

• Sign the telecommunications continuity agreement

• Establish an outage and incident coordination cell

• Freeze unilateral changes to numbering and major spectrum assignments

• Protect interconnection

• Begin the national evidence register

• Identify critical international and backbone dependencies

• Establish temporary dispute-escalation procedures

The test of success is simple: services remain available while the institutional transition begins.

Phase 2: Establish common rules — three to twelve months

The next phase should deliver:

• Interim interconnection rules

• A national numbering plan

• Initial spectrum reconciliation

• Common quality-of-service measurements

• Infrastructure-sharing principles

• Transitional recognition of operating rights

• Independent traffic and payment reconciliation

• Publication of baseline sector data

This creates a functioning national market without waiting for complete institutional consolidation.

Phase 3: Restructure and modernise — twelve to thirty-six months

Only after the factual baseline and common rules exist should Yemen take major structural decisions, including:

• Modern telecommunications legislation

• A permanent independent regulator

• Restructuring of state-owned entities

• Renewal or reissue of operator licences

• Spectrum refarming

• Competition and wholesale-access remedies

• New investment frameworks

• Universal-service arrangements

• Data governance and cybersecurity legislation

• Integration of satellite and other non-terrestrial services

This stage should be informed by the future architecture Yemen wants, not simply the institutional structure it inherited.

What must be avoided

A credible reconstruction strategy must recognise several predictable failure modes.

Using licences as political rewards

Licences should not be distributed to consolidate influence or reward aligned investors. Poor licensing decisions could shape Yemen’s market for decades.

Forcing consolidation before due diligence

Combining assets without understanding ownership, condition and liabilities would transfer disputes into the new structure rather than resolve them.

Allowing reconstruction finance to reinforce monopoly control

Donor or development finance should not strengthen a bottleneck unless fair wholesale access and governance safeguards are attached.

Treating spectrum as immediate fiscal income

Expensive spectrum awards may generate headline revenue but leave operators without sufficient capital to build networks. Coverage, service affordability and investment commitments may matter more than maximising upfront fees.

Importing a sophisticated regulatory model that Yemen cannot administer

The initial framework must be proportionate. Rules that cannot be monitored or enforced will undermine rather than build legitimacy.

Waiting for a comprehensive political settlement

If every technical improvement is postponed until all political questions are settled, fragmentation will deepen and informal systems will expand.

The boardroom and policy questions

Senior decision-makers should ask:

• Which telecommunications functions must operate nationally from the first day of a transition?

• Which institutional questions can safely be deferred?

• How will customers be protected if authorities or institutions remain divided?

• Who will verify licences, assets, spectrum and liabilities?

• What prevents a transitional arrangement from becoming permanent fragmentation?

• How will existing operator investments be protected without validating improper decisions?

• Which infrastructure should be shared?

• Where is structural separation required to prevent monopoly abuse?

• How should satellite connectivity be integrated into the national framework?

• What conditions should be attached to reconstruction finance?

• Which decisions are technical, and which require a political settlement?

• How will Yemen build regulatory capability while maintaining service continuity?

These questions need answers before large procurement programmes begin. Otherwise, investment risks reinforcing the same structural weaknesses that reconstruction is intended to remove.

Conclusion: reunify the service before reunifying every institution

Yemen’s communications sector cannot be reconstructed through engineering alone.

Towers, fibre, power systems and mobile networks will all require investment. But unless operators can interconnect, licences are recognised, spectrum is coordinated and strategic infrastructure is available on predictable terms, new capital will sit on top of unresolved fragmentation.

The choice is not between immediate reunification and indefinite division.

Yemen can create an intermediate model: a nationally interoperable communications environment supported by common technical rules, continued operational autonomy and a staged institutional settlement.

This approach is less dramatic than announcing the restoration of a single national system. It is also more likely to work.

Telecommunications could become a practical laboratory for Yemen’s wider recovery. It offers measurable services, established operators, identifiable infrastructure and clear mutual benefits. Cooperation can begin with routing, interference, outages and emergency communications rather than constitutional questions.

If Yemen can demonstrate that divided institutions are capable of maintaining common systems, it will create confidence extending beyond telecommunications. Payments, public services, trade, digital identity and economic administration will all depend on similar principles of interoperability and trusted coordination.

The first milestone in Yemen’s digital reconstruction is therefore not 5G, a new satellite system or a national fibre programme.

It is agreement that every Yemeni should be able to participate in one communications economy—even before every institution governing that economy has been fully reunited.

Next in the series: Designing Yemen’s Future Connectivity Architecture—Fibre, Mobile, Satellite and Subsea.