Telenor Pakistan today claimed that it is rolling-out one new 4G cell-site every working hour and it has maintained that pace since it started its 4G rollout last September.
“30% of Telenor’s cell sites are now on 4G while the company has plans to stretch its 4G footprint to more than 70% of its entire network within one year”, said Khurrum Ashfaque, Chief Technical Officer at Telenor Pakistan, while briefing media at its headquarters a while ago.
Press briefing also marked the launch of Telenor’s revamped brand identity. Irfan Wahab Khan, CEO of Telenor Pakistan and Bilal Kazim, Chief Marketing Officer at Telenor Pakistan, were also present at the occasion.
“Telenor Pakistan works tirelessly towards accomplishing its vison of ‘empowering societies’ through various digital and financial initiatives that are designed around the ever changing customer needs,” said Irfan Wahab Khan, CEO Telenor Pakistan.
Since Telenor Pakistan’s 4G license acquisition in June 2016, it has rolled out over 3,000 LTE sites across 110+ cities in Pakistan. Karachi alone has received 600+ LTE sites with special arrangements – such as spectrum reframing and dual band usage – made for enhanced user experience of the city’s LTE customers.
Telenor Pakistan has said that it received substantial investment from Telenor Group for LTE infrastructure enhancement reiterating Telenor’s commitment in Pakistan. This investment will enable the company to have additional LTE sites as well as reframe the existing sites.
Without revealing the investment value, the officials said that company’s focus during next year will be on 4G expansion.
“Since our core-network is 4G ready and there are only small components that require upgradation, our 4G rollouts are going to be quick”, Telenor’s CTO claimed.
In addition to adding number of 4G towers, Khurram said that they have the right mix of spectrum to offer premium 4G experience to customers. He said that there are frequencies that offer better speeds while others offer better capacity.
Khurram said that that Telenor is the only operator in Pakistan that’s using mix of spectrum for its 4G, 3G and older 2G networks. ”
“We will also initiate building towards a 4.5G network rollout to cater to the ever growing needs of our customers and bring them the benefits of digital technology. Along with being the first telco in Pakistan to have cloud computing services, we also have a high efficiency spectrum utilizing all four 4 bands”, he added.
Khurram further revealed that his company has more than 12,500 KM of fiber optic network — up from just 5,000 KMs of fiber in 2013-14 — in place to supercharge the company with higher speed data for its 3G and 4G demands.
“And then we have deployed in-house cloud infrastructure, another first in industry, to be able to offer and support any sort of service on our network”, said Khurram Ashfaque.
He said that the company is committed to offer its customers all the digital solutions they want.
