State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

PTA has issued a revised framework for MVNOs in Pakistan. Read the official pdf here or read below for highlights. A Daily times article by Muhammad Yasir says that Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has finally set $5 million initial licence fee for Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) to be valid for the period of 10 years. Would this mean that we may see some new foreign investment in Pakistan telecom?

A MVNO is a mobile operator that does not own its own spectrum and usually does not have its own network infrastructure. Instead, MVNO’s have business arrangements with traditional mobile operators to buy minutes of use (MOU) for sale to their own customers.

While MVNO’s typically do not have their own infrastructure, some leading providers are actually deploying their own Mobile Switching Centers (MSC) and even Service Control Points (SCP) in some cases. Leading MVNO’s deploy their own mobile infrastructure in order to facilitate the means to offer value-added services.

In this way, MNVO’s can treat incumbent infrastructure such as radio equipment as a commodity, while the MVNO offers its own advanced and differentiated services based on exploitation of their own intelligent network infrastructure. The goal of offering value-added services is to differentiate versus the incumbent mobile operator, allowing for customer acquisition and preventing the MVNO from needing to compete on the basis of price alone.

MVNO’s have full control over the SIM card, branding, marketing, billing, and customer care operations. While sometimes offering operational support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS) to support the MVNO, the incumbent mobile operators most keep their own OSS/BSS processes and procedures separate and distinct from those of the MVNO.