Korea's SK Telecom Buys Instaphone
By Babar Bhatti | October 26, 2007 | No Comments
Pakistan’s smallest cellular phone company by subscriber numbers, Instaphone has may have been sold to SK Telecom of South Korea with management control and majority shares, according to unofficial sources.
This 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 made so this deal is not certain yet.
As reported in the local media.
We had news of SK Telecom biding for Pakcom, which operates with brand name of Insta Phone in Pakistan. The situation got clearer in recent days when the officials confirmed the news. And now we are in good position to quote that Instaphone has been sold to SK Telecom. The details of the agreement are not made public; however, the agreement confirmation has arrived from both sides.
Mr. Shahid Feroz, CEO Insta Phone Pakistan, commenting on the acquisition said that this would be the opening of another success chapter in Pakistan’s telecom market. However, he didn’t reveal the details of the contract, but he was optimistic that the final agreement will be duly signed with in one month’s time. Mr. Feroz disclosed some of SK Telecom’s plan for Pakistan market. He said that the company is willing to rollout country’s first 3G network. He also told that the management rights will also shift away to SK Telecom along with majority of shares in Pakcom.
Insta Phone, which started its service back in 1990, hold 350,000 customers in Pakistan, operates using TDMA technology. Sources have told that Assessment of Pakcom was prepared by Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (HSBC) and Deutsche Bank of Germany.
SK Telecom revealed three key business areas to be concentrated on. These are the furtherance of their global reach by expanding internationally, developing the convergence of telecommunications and broadcasting, and searching for new business opportunities.
With an aim towards becoming a major player in information communication under an economic umbrella that will be over all of East Asia, SK is actively seeking multifaceted business opportunities in overseas markets.
Established in 1984, SK Telecom has a number of interesting networks under its belt including CDMA 2000, HSDPA etc. True to the uniqueness of South Korean market, the company offers a number of wired/wireless and application services.
Comments
No Responses to “Korea's SK Telecom Buys Instaphone”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe via Email
About TelecomPK
TelecomPk.Net is a leading source of information and analysis about Pakistan Telecom industry. More here.
Online Directory
October 30th, 2007 @ 12:36 am
well finally,
let us see when they land and what they have in mind for the market and the competitors.
October 31st, 2007 @ 3:10 am
Instaphone had a deal with Huawei for nation-wide CDMA 3G, will that deal prevails? Someone with an answer?
November 5th, 2007 @ 5:41 am
is this deal done now, cause i havn’t heard anything official yet !!
November 5th, 2007 @ 12:17 pm
SK Telecom has not confirmed this yet … so this is not official. But one thing is sure that SKT is shopping around very seriously.
November 17th, 2007 @ 2:50 pm
[...] we have been discussing, SK Telecom, Korea’s top wireless service provider, had plans to expand its business. [...]
November 21st, 2007 @ 6:04 am
This News we are lesion from since 2006. That SKT buy Instaphone major shares but tell now no one hade confirm and tell now nobody come to Instaphone. Now Instaphone management has confirmed that SKT management is coming by 27 November 2007. Let see.
SK..
February 15th, 2008 @ 3:20 am
open the latest agreement deal and provide the deal features and whats plans of future launching.
March 25th, 2008 @ 4:14 am
[...] mobile i think Correction! I dont know about Scom, China Mobile bought Paktel. On the other hand Insta was taken over by South Korea Telecom (SK telecom). These days Paktel is known as CMPak. And once China Mobile launches, there is no [...]