ISLAMABAD (SPECIAL REPORT)
Four telecom companies are in race to get Warid’s small customer base in Pakistan with old technology and heavy loan. Mobilink, Etisalat(UFONE), China Mobile (ZONG) and Qatar Mobile are seriously working on it. Warid telecom Pakistan has offered last month to sell its complete share with management control. Dubai group decided sell it’a Pakistan network after get SingTel share. Three telecom companies from Pakistan such as Mobilink, Ufone and Zong whereas one from Qatar showed interest to buy it and has been participate in pre bidding conference held last month in Dubai. Mobilink and Ufone get international experts to complete the tasks. These international experts are doing work on this task in which they evaluate Warid Telecom assist and price for bidding.
Warid Telecom started it service in Pakistan early in beginning of 2000. Its management belongs to banking sector. In beginning it had invested on networking with latest technology and mostly work in Punjab. The company management never taken seriously to update its network and its network is old more than 10 years. With bad management the company comes under heavy loan more than $ 800 million. The company has 12503036 customers as per Telecom authority record. Ufone has 23869218 customers and zong has 20199828 customers. Mobilink have 36747587 customers enjoying first position in telecom sector. These numbers as per telecom authority but actual and active customers are very much low.
Zong and Ufone are in third position right now and both are very serious to get Warid Telecom to increase their customer base so that they can become market leader. It’s possible if the numbers of customers are same what was given by Telecom authority in its record. The actual numbers are different. The Telecom sector are predicting that actual competition would be between Zong and Ufone the winner will be pay high price to get customers of Warid Telecom with old technology and heavy loan. Even than the winner will be come on second position.
Zong has network with latest technology with 3G and 4G though out Pakistan and it can adjust all Warid customer in it network but Ufone has very big Issues of network and its customers are running away with only just 2,60,0000 customers left Ufone in one month. This game may end before the new spectrum auction in Pakistan. After that the situation might change.