Telenor In 2007 - Strong Growth, $1.8bn Investment in Pakistan
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
 (No Ratings Yet) Loading ... |
 |
TelecomPk.Net is a leading source of information and analysis about Pakistan Telecom industry. 
Four things are obvious from the interview of Telenor’s CEO:
a)Operators are dubious if a licence bid by competitor may put the competitor on advantage specially Mobilink which have already made many time more money than it invested and may be ready to pay high licence fees.
b) If this biding is open to all and not only to current operators then they are also afraid of new market forces which may harden the competition.
c) They are more than happy to take the licence for free and then invest in equipment. In fact they do not want to pay licence fees at all.
In the best interest of the nation PTA should go for bidding open to all so maximum can be get out of the licence. The only problem may be political instability we are facing these days.
These companies must realize that every technology cannot be as lucrative as GSM.