Telenor Wins First Universal Service Fund Bid In Pakistan
According to Daily Times, Telenor has won the first USF bidding which was for Malakand area. There will be other biddings for Sukkur, Sibi, Chaghi, DG Khan and Attock. I hope the first phase work starts soon.
For more background on USF plans in Pakistan, see this prior post. More from the paper:
Telenor Pakistan won the final stage of technical and financial bidding for Universal Service Fund (USF), leaving Pakistan Telecommunication
Authority Co Limited (PTCL), Warid Telecom and CMPak out of the competition, industry sources told Daily Times on Wednesday.Sources said Warid Telecom and CMPak were unable to qualify for the technical bid. While in the financial bid for 1,200 villages of the Malakand division, on the higher end PTCL bid was Rs 1,748 million and Telenor’s was Rs 310 million, giving no choice to USF but to announce Telenor as the winner of the first bid decision. The decision will be announced within a couple of days.
The funds for the project would be provided by the multi-billion USF instituted within the ministry of information technology through annual contributions received from the telecom operators. The auctioning of the funds would be provided to existing telecom operators. The objectives for USF are based on the Universal Service Policy and on the Fixed and Mobile Policies. The government has designed the market liberalisation policy to maximise the commercial availability and coverage of telecommunications and ICT services in Pakistan.
The government recognises, however, that even with market liberalisation, and under strictly commercial considerations, there may exist certain populations or geographic areas that would remain un-served or relatively underserved. The government’s universal service policy is designed to ensure that these designated populations and geographic areas gradually receive defined adequate services.
The USF will finance the spread of network coverage and service to previously un-served or under-served areas and will make it possible for operators to supply individual service on normal commercial terms in areas which are covered by USF, in order to reach defined tele-density and broadband penetration targets.
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Dear Sir/Madam,
I belong to to Distt. Buner (Malakand Division), but my village Bampokha is still unable to attract the attention of any mobile operator, about 25 KM away there is a tower of telenor, and would you believe still every 2nd person got cell, its fact not story, I don,t know why, i really challenge the survey made by there, in my village there is a million rupees business.
I made offer my properties for any tower or anything, but please made its your 1st priority to start telenor services from my village.