Four international telcos have made it through to the latest round of bidding for a 75 percent stake in Zamtel, Zambia’s state-owned incumbent phone operator, reports Dow Jones Newswires. The Zambia Development Agency (ZDA) said today that preliminary bids were received by the 23 December deadline from Indian state-owned operator BSNL, Libya’s LAP Greencom and LAP Green Networks, Angola’s Unitel, and Russia’s VimpelCom (the latter in collaboration with Altimo Holdings). “All four shortlisted participants are serious, respected telecommunications companies,” said Muhabi Lungu, acting director general of the ZDA. The agency said the next round of bidding begins Monday, with the shortlisted bidders given an opportunity to conduct further due diligence on Zamtel before submitting new offers. Other operators linked with Zamtel in recent months have included Telkom South Africa, Portugal Telecom and Orascom Telecom.

Zambia announced in September that it was to sell-off Zamtel; the government is expected to retain a minimum 25 percent stake in the company, but has reserved the right to sell this stake via an IPO. As well as the country’s fixed-line network, Zamtel also owns local mobile firm Cell-Z, and Zamtel Online, an ISP.  Cell-Z is Zambia’s third-largest (and smallest) mobile operator with less than 250,000 connections by the end of 2009 according to Wireless Intelligence estimates. It trails larger rivals Zain (3.1 million connections) and MTN (1 million).