Archive for February 28th, 2008

Telenor In 2007 - Strong Growth, $1.8bn Investment in Pakistan

Published by Babar Bhatti on February 28, 2008 under 3G, Business, Mobile Companies

In our previous discussions we have observed the growth rates and overall positions of the mobile companies. Telenor has emerged as one of the leading company in 2007 with about 8 million new subscribers (or SIMs if you want to be accurate). Despite a few growing pains such as low ranking in the PTA quality ratings, Telenor is poised to push further its brand and subscriber growth.

Telenor has also started to become more involved in social activities. In addition to the typical corporate social responsibility activities, Telenor has sponsored recent Startup Insider series event in Islamabad. That is a good trend and I hope that it will continue. Companies such as Telenor can make a big impact in terms of guiding and training the youth through such activities.

Here’s an interview of Telenor CEO in which Tore Johnsen talks about the total investment Telenor has made, agreements with Nokia-Siemens & Multinet and his views on WiMAX and 3G. Excerpts:

We understand the government’s ambition of introducing 3G in the market, but growth and investment in the basic mobile infrastructure should not be sacrificed, as there are too many people still without basic access to mobile telephony.

we demand that the government should consider 3G not as a licensing opportunity, but rather as allocation of additional spectrum linked with roll out obligations and not hefty upfront fee. PTA and FAB should also make additional UMTS spectrum available in order to have equitable spectrum allocation