Following news item has been carried from Dawn News Paper
According to sources, Telenor group is interested to sell its shares in Pakistan and is holding talks with the China Mobile.
Though both the operators have denied any such development, sources said that negotiations were being held secretly at the group level.
Though Telenor, a Norwegian company, has a subscriber-base of 20 million or so in Pakistan, it has been deliberating to sell its management shares since long because of ‘security issues’.
The Telenor group has already focused on India for investment, as it recently sought to buy about 67 per cent shares of Unitech Wireless and telecom arm of Unitech Ltd in India.
The Indian market is experiencing a major growth in mobile penetration and currently it stands at 27 per cent with a total population of about 1.2 billion.
There has been a lot of potential in the market and the global operators see it a best place for future market.
China Mobile’s first international business venture, Zong, currently has over six million subscribers.
Before the merger talks with the Telenor group, the China Mobile had offered to buy the management shares of Warid Telecom Pakistan.
However, deal could not materialize owing to price issue.
Mobilink, Telenor, Ufone, Warid and Zong (CM-Pak) have reportedly conveyed to the PTA that there was a room for only ‘four’ players.
A PTA official said there were chances that by 2010, the country may have four operators.
The number of cell-phone users in Pakistan has reached over 90 million. Though Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) shows declining trend over the last few years, aggressive marketing and expansion of network has enabled mobile operators to grab more subscribers on their networks.
Source: Dawn Newspaper
Note: ProPakistani had uncovered talks between China Mobile and Telenor here
hi,could some1 tell at what stage these talks are?because earlier china mobile had tried to purchase warid but that deal did not go through.THIS time is telenor really going to sell out to china mobile? that will be a shocker cus they werer the biggest group,bigger than orascom.telenor had international operations around the globe.so why is it selling its pakistani operations?
Being a european operator in Telenor has serious concerns with security issues going on in Pakistan. Apart from that the cut throat competetion at present in Pakistani market highly suffers those operators which have larger number of subscribers. Simple example is e.g. if telenor has forecasted Rs. 1 per sms, but now because of competetion they are generating revenue of Rs. 0.5 per sms. So larger the number of subscriber, the bigger would be the loss, and lesser would be profit. In presence of security issues, there should be some ‘up side’ of the story to keep staying the business men in the market. which is not there at present.
On other hand, India being a relatively peaceful region and with larger population is more attractive for european business men, compared with Pakistan which is almost a war zone.
These are my personal analysis, cannot be taken as authentic info.
lets see whats happend!
not a good news :(
Salam..telenor ka hamare mulak ma rehna bohat zaruri h..q k sara competition is ki wja se h
Warid and Zong will be the future players
There is only one big player in the market in 2010 which is ZoNG…..
Actually Telenor is focusing on a much bigger market INDIA. Also as it is mentioned in the article that Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is declining from the last few years.
All guys n gals, can anybody tell me abt Ufone??? Abt the development and is there any future of Uuuuuuufone???????
Bad News.
Any update on this? I really hope this is only a rumour! :<
As per my understanding to this article
telenor is interested in selling share. most probably 49%.
in that case telenor will have just a business partner.
merger is something else.
So we all hope that telenor is not going to give up as it is 2nd major telecom player in pakistan
you comments are needed here
(Amir bhai)
we all wish best of luck to telenor.
Zong is not a good pay master and what will the future of telenor employees
Not Good for them
I THINK 2010 K SIRF 2 BIGPLAYERS HONGAY ZONG AUR UFONE ,MOBILINK KA TO SIRF CODE HI REH JAYE GA JAISAY ISS K NETWORK K HALAAT HAIN
Ya i was too ssrirpued when i notices about Zong.com is dorected to Pakistan Entry on WIki few days back, i thing Pakistani zong is not a company its just a product of CMpak.