Warid Tel’ s top management is keen to acquire 3G license as it has decided to participate in the upcoming auction of 3G license in order to provide advanced services to their customers in the future.
The 3G technology will definitely provide an edge to operators among the market players of the sector particularly for attracting new customers into the base, while retaining its existing base, a source in the industry said quoting company’s official.
Warid will try all options to remain at par with its competitors in order to become a favorite network of customers, he further quoted company’s management vision.
They said that the management has chalked out aggressive strategy for migrating on advance network as parts of its major capacity enhancement plans in the coming years.
The management of Warid was seen strong with the arrival of telecom industry’s top guns in 2011 which include Zohaire A Khalique, Shahab Hafeez and Ali Raza Mehdi. Since then, the company has been witnessed coming up with different working strategies and improvement of customers’ base and services plans.
The new leadership consolidated financial health and improved services operations and company’s branding, which killed all rumors regarding its merger or acquisition deal with different companies.
There were few packages introduced and received healthy response including Warid Ezee and Warid Bol Anmol, SMS Crore Ka, Karachi Offer, and Glow. Besides, the company in collaboration with Bank Alflaha Limited has announced to set up a new company of financial service in coming months
There are some nine telecommunication companies likely to participate in bidding in the current year for 3G telecom licenses in Pakistan.
Amongst the existing players, Warid Telecom is keen to get the 3G license besides Mobilink, Telenor, Ufone and Zong. However, there are reports that international players will also interested in acquiring 3G license and start their operations in Pakistan.
It is expected that license base price will be driven at expected high level with the participation of existing and new entrants in the process. The base price the base price of cellular license for 8 years has been set at $155 million, while for new licenses to be effective for 15 years has been set at $210 million.
The auction was scheduled to be held on March 28 and 29 but it was delayed on legal and procedural issues by the government on the rising concerns of transparency and pricing issue. But it is expected that the 3G licence auction will be held sooner or later in 2012 whenever it gets possible for the government.