Comments on: SK Telecom To Buy Instaphone?

By: State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan » Korea’s SK Telecom Buys Instaphone

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:31:37 +0000

[...] was first posted at TGP by Uzair Ahmed. See my previous coverage of this topic. The official notification and details from SK Telecom is yet to be [...]

By: NM

NM — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:43:46 +0000

SK Telecom bids for Pakistan telecom firm-paper

SEOUL ( 2007-10-10 21:37:03 ) :
SK Telecom Co., South Korea’s top mobile operator, has submitted a bid proposal for Pakcom, a Pakistan telecom company, the Korea Economic Daily reported, citing a senior SK Telecom official.

“We have put in a proposal and are waiting for a reply,” the newspaper quoted SK Telecom Vice Chairman Cho Jung-nam as saying when asked about market speculation that it had contacted Pakcom about a possible stake purchase.

The mobile company also left the door open to buying a stake in US wireless firm Sprint Nextel , Cho said.

“We are interested in potential deals with Asian companies, including Pakistan,” SK Telecom’s spokesman told Reuters. He declined to elaborate.

By: Shahzad Iqbal

Shahzad Iqbal — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 13:02:31 +0000

Hi guys, a friend of mine knows the Afreens and he says that a senior Afreen told him that a very good news about Telecard is expected very shortly. Only time will tell what is to happen..

By: Rana

Rana — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 11:28:07 +0000

Hamid, i am currently employeed in INSTAPHONE, and i have one confirm news and that is SK Telecom delegation was in Pakistan and was in INSTAs Head Office, Karachi. What i m not confirmed about is that why they were there? Now i am sure they didnt come all the way to Pakistan in INSTAs head office just to say “HI” to someone.

Mr. Mukhtar is right, such information is not provided to staff of the company and is kept as a secret.

By: Hamid

Hamid — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 01:47:56 +0000

well ya i agree with you people but still there are no visible signs. SK currently finalised the list of countries it was interested in and Pakistan was not even on the list.

anyhow we forwarded some of encouraging facts about the potential of Pakistan’s Telecom Industry to concerned decision makers in SK Telecom and now im asked to give another detailed presentation to the management with current facts n figures.

anyways hope for the best.

i need some help regarding the latest data from you people. If you people have some presentation on the current situation of Pakistani Telecom Industry I ‘d really appriciate that.

By: Babar Bhatti

Babar Bhatti — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:57:02 +0000

Hamid, I agree with NM … the decisions are not likely to be known to general employees of SK. Best is to keep an eye on the media for breaking stories.

By: NM

NM — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:21:47 +0000

Mr H Mukhtar

SK telesys is their vendor. these decesions may only be known to the senior managment at SK.

By: hamid

hamid — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 16:41:43 +0000

I am currently working at SK telecom as an intern but i didnot hear any news like that. it may be true but it seems more like a rumor to me though. Actually I talked to an official of a company named SK telesys and they told me that they are working on network optimisation for some pakistani company with huawei.
about SK telecom, I have heard that some officials are interested in going to pakistan this year with people from SK networks.
(some of them had observations on the security in Pakistan).

actually i am also going to present about Pakistan’s telecom industry next week :’).

the current situation of our country and the kidnapping of their people by the neighbours has made things weird and people are now concerned about Pakistan but still as some of the major korean companies i.e. samsung hyundai and LG are already doing business in Pakistan so things are not that bad either.

anyways, i would really appreciate if someone shares some nice information that they want me to share with SK telecom (the operators) or SK telesys (the hardware equipment vendors). I already got some data from the ministry’s sites.

thanks and best regards,
Hamid

hamid.mukhtar (at) gmail.com

By: NM

NM — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 10:52:15 +0000

RA: any more on Instaphone and SK, I hope they have not panikkkkked bcse of the mess we are in and more bcse of the kidnapping of the their citizens by our worthy neighbour’s outlaws (or inlaws).

By: Boomerang

Boomerang — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 11:11:46 +0000

Instaphone has already missed the boat. Even if today they start deploying CDMA EVDO network it will take them 6~8 months to have minimum coverage to launch the service. By that time GSM would have grown another 10~12M subscribers. They might be counting too much on data features of CDMA but how many people in pakistan need mobile data??? for such market segment WLAN and WiMax (’08 onwards) will be more reasonable. On top of everything handset prices and availability will be a big draw back if they go CDMA.

However, if they manage to get spectrum in 1800MHz (i don’t know if its available may be if you guys know then plz share) they can launch GSM 1800 otherwise I dont think that they will not be successful with CDMA.