How Kuwait’s phone network went from a British company to the first AXE order outside Europe
Nationalised in 1956, switched to Swedish crossbar exchanges in the 1960s, and running analogue mobile before the century was out.
Before the telephone became a government service in Kuwait, a British company laid the lines and ran them. Within thirty years of that, Kuwait had become the first country outside Europe to sign for the most advanced telephone exchanges of the day.
1942: the first lines
On 1 February 1942, under Sheikh Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the government agreed with a British company to install telephone lines in the country. Telephone and telegraph services stayed in British hands for more than a decade after that.
1956: nationalisation
On 1 February 1956 the telephone service run by the British company was nationalised and became a government department. Post, telegraph and telephone were then brought together under a single Department of Post, Telegraph and Telephone, headed by Sheikh Fahad Al-Salem Al-Sabah. In 1959 Kuwait joined the International Telecommunication Union.
After independence, the department became a ministry in the first government formed in January 1962.
1965: the Swedish exchanges
Ericsson’s company history says it opened a technical office in Kuwait in 1965, alongside the country’s first orders for crossbar switching. A crossbar exchange connects calls automatically through a grid of crossing metal bars rather than an operator plugging in cords.
Installation of ARE, a computer-controlled crossbar system, began in the early 1970s, with Kuwait among its first customers. Then in 1977 Kuwait became the first country outside Europe to sign a contract for the digital AXE system, ahead of Saudi Arabia.
1989: mobile, analogue first
Between 1989 and 1993 the same company installed an analogue E-TACS mobile network for the Mobile Telecommunications Company. By the turn of the century it dominated Kuwait’s market for both E-TACS and international exchanges.
Photo: The inside of a crossbar switch, its horizontal and vertical bars making the connections. Illustrative, not from a Kuwaiti exchange. By Loquax, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), “Today in Kuwait’s history” for 1 February, as published by Kuwait Times on 1 February 2026; Ministry of Communications, official X account (ITU membership); “History of the post in Kuwait”, via the Kuwait History forum; Ericsson, “Kuwait” in the company’s history archive (ericsson.com).
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