Sotelma is a private telecommunications company in Mali

Mali

Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...

. The company is based in Bamako

Bamako

Bamako is the capital of Mali and its largest city with a population of 1.8 million . Currently, it is estimated to be the fastest growing city in Africa and sixth fastest in the world...

. Sotelma provides local telephony, international telephony, internet service and mobile telephone service, etc. Its mobile service subsidiary is Malitel

Malitel

Malitel is a mobile telephone service provider in Mali. It is a subsidiary of Sotelma, the national telecommunications company. Malitel's service is supported by Siemens AG....

. It is also the official registry of the .ml

.ml

- Second-level domains :Registrations are at the third level beneath these names:* .com.ml: Local companies and trademark registrants; may reflect legal or brand name * .net.ml: Internet providers...

 country code domain.

The full name of the company in the French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

is "Société des télécommunications au Mali".

In 2008, it was announced the government of Mali would privatise Sotelma to an as yet unnamed private party. The company will be divided with 51% going to a single private investor, 20% retained by the government, 10% going to employees, and 19% sold by public offer. Privatization was finalized in 2010.

As of 2002, Sotelma had a total worth of 43,817 billion CFA francs, over 1300 staff, operated 1100 km of fibre optic transmission line, 9 DOMSAT relay stations, 19 VSAT stations, 110000 telephone subscriber lines and 5241 public phones.