Mobile Phones Industry in Pakistan

Telecom Futures - an initiative of Telenor Pakistan with Nokia-Siemens and TEVTA (Technical Education & Vocational Training Authority, Punjab) has announced a new lab in Lahore. This 2-year telecom diploma program was launched in 2006 and is running at Government Polytechnic Institute Attock and the Government Institute of Technology DG Khan. This is a good example of industry-government-academia collaboration to solve the talent gap problem and to provide skills in areas where there is a huge demand for local training.

Some background from Telenor website:

Telenor Pakistan and its industry partners, Nokia and Siemens, realize that vocational training institutes are building human capital from the lower socioeconomic classes and there is a huge opportunity to help them get their fair share from the Telecom Promise. The Telecom Futures program aims at building on TEVTA’s Higher National Diploma in Telecom by aligning curriculum with industry expectations, providing advanced trainings and rewards to teachers, sharing specialized equipment with students, and offering internships or jobs to suitable diploma holders. The target is to create a scalable model for large-scale implementation, an education and training model that improves the level of human resource created locally, and increases the employability of vocational diploma holders.

The China Mobile has sought the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) consent to swap the Paktel mobile company name as CM-Pak, the name under which the company intends to operate. The China Mobile that took over Paktel from Millicom International after paying dues has now formally requested the regulator for change of Paktel’s name. Officials from PTA have confirmed that it was approached by the China Mobile with the application that it wanted to operate under the name of CM-Pak, but added no decision has been taken so far.

China Mobile has pumped in $700 million in the Pakistan telecommunication sector since taking over the management control of Paktel. The company will invest $2 billion in the next three years (till 2009) to expand its network, an official of the Paktel..

According to China Mobile chairman Wang Jianzhou, the company plans to spend USD400 million this year to expand its network in Pakistan. This was reported by Telegeography. China Mobile entered the Pakistan mobile market earlier this year when it acquired an 89% stake in Paktel for USD284 million, its first acquisition beyond China and Hong Kong. Wang said that the company had invested USD460 million in Paktel to date, and that China Mobile was hoping to gain experience from the venture that it could apply to further overseas expansion in the future.

According to TeleGeography’s database, at the end of 2006 Warid claimed a 15.7% share of the country’s wireless market, while Paktel had 2.7% of users. Orascom Telecom-owned Mobilink was the market leader with 22.5 million customers and 46.5% market share, ahead of Ufone with 20.9%.