The Sulaymaniyah-based telecommunications company, KurdTel, announced today that the digital telephone exchange in Sulaymaniyah will be directly connected to the outside world, reported KurdSat TV on 24 December 2001. People in the Iraqi Kurdish city will be able to make and receive international calls from their home telephone lines. A source in the company told KurdSat that the international line will be opened tomorrow, 25 December 2001. The telecommunications network in the Iraqi Kurdish region was largely in tatters after the Gulf war in 1991. The Kurds in the areas outside the control of Baghdad have managed to restore a large part of the network and expand it to other services, such as, mobile telephones and internet.