I recently sat down with Nokia’s Senior Vice President of Mobile Networks (Middle East and Africa) Mikko Lavanti to discuss Nokia’s presence in Pakistan and the upcoming 5G launch. Also present during the discussion was Mr. Adil Munir, Country Head of Nokia Pakistan, providing valuable insight into the company’s objectives and recent achievements in Pakistan.
We discussed several topics like the upcoming 5G spectrum auction by PTA, competition with Chinese rivals, and other points of interest. Here’s what we learned from our discussion:
Haamiz: Okay, so Mikko, what brings you to Pakistan?
Mikko: Well, I think what brings me to Pakistan is the Pakistani people. In my role, I run mobile networks for Nokia in the entire Middle East and Africa region, which covers 71 countries. Pakistan is one of the key markets for us for a couple of reasons. First, there’s a great demand for data from the end customers and it’s a great opportunity for us and the industry to grow. During the last couple of years, there was underinvestment in the mobile networks and perhaps also in overall telco infrastructures. Now with 5G coming, it creates a great opportunity for the operators and the industry to improve infrastructure further as a key enabler for the Digital Pakistan plans.
I met with the newly appointed Minister of IT and Telecom today and we discussed the meaningful impact that 5G networks can have for the country and the benefits to Pakistani people. As for the second reason, we have a very good team here in Pakistan, with more than 700 people who are exporting services as well. We have tremendous competence in Pakistan in terms of technical education, language, skills, attitude towards customers, and the services-oriented mindset. Over the last 48 hours, I’ve met six wonderful young ladies and two young men we just recently hired. I was impressed with the amount of energy and the innovation they bring. So, what brings me to Pakistan is the people, and of course, I come here to do business.
But I think it’s all about the people and how things happen here.
Haamiz: So, have you been here before? Is this your first time?
Mikko: No, it’s not my first time. I’ve not been in Pakistan enough, I would say. But this is my third time in Pakistan.
Haamiz: What are your thoughts about the upcoming 5G spectrum auction? The telecom operators didn’t participate as it might be too early for the Pakistani population to transition to 5G. What are your thoughts about that?
Mikko: I try to look at it objectively. I’d love to have 5G everywhere around the world because that’s my business. That’s also the ideal scenario. But industry health is also very important, and it is essential that operators can make a profit out of what they are earning in similar markets. Many countries came up with innovative business models in their spectrum auctions which resulted win-win situation for all stakeholders in the industry. I discussed the same when I met with the Minister of IT & Telecom today and with the telecom regulator (PTA) yesterday. They have initiated the process of hiring a consultant to make this 5G spectrum auction a success for the government, all industry stakeholders, and, most importantly, the people of Pakistan.
I think that you have a decent data network available here because when I travel around, I’m constantly connected to mobile networks. Unlike last week in one country in Africa where I had no service for two days in a row. My previous role was serving customers in Uzbekistan, and they have a digital Uzbekistan plan with a clear roadmap of introducing digitized systems such as an online taxation system with all the benefits that it brings in terms of process speed, transparency, and others.
People might argue that they can do it with 4G and don’t need 5G for that. I tend to think differently. 5G will enable, in its true form, a lot of use cases and bring significant improvements. Maybe autonomous driving is not the first use case that you would see in the streets here when I see the traffic. But if I look at it in terms of fixed wireless access, I think there are a lot of aspects you can enhance with improved bandwidth and capacity, reduced latency, and others. And we’ve seen that happening with other customers.
And then it’s also about the enterprise segment. Today we discussed (with the Minister of IT and Telecom) the smart city and safe city concepts. We must look at use cases like operational improvements at the harbors, and efficiency in the oil, and gas industry. Many things can be done on the enterprise side and I think 5G will become an enabler for those use cases. If Pakistan does not invest in 5G you’re going to be behind the competition in terms of digital infrastructure.
You have a large and young population here. Think about it also in the way that you enable all the innovation that happens around this. If you don’t have the 5G network in place, it’s like you are trying to get people to keep driving old 1980s cars. Because that’s how fast the communication goes forward. It does make sense because Pakistan does need to enhance digital infrastructure at one point or another.
Haamiz: Is Pakistan ready to move to 5G right now? Like, is the infrastructure ready?
Mikko: Typically, the key thing for 5G networks is that you need a good, strong optical backbone, the IP networks. We have been helping build those long haul and metro fiber networks here, with the three leading fiber operators. PTCL, Transworld, and Cybernet. And I think that gives the country a good start. I see that the backbone seems to be in good shape but still, Pakistan is among those countries where you have much less fiberisation and most of the population does not have access to fast fiber connections at home It takes a lot of time to extend fiber across big cities in Pakistan and also in rural areas. A quick and economical alternative is Fixed Wireless Access networks where the end-user can get data connection with reasonable speed and reliability.
The issue that I see here is the amount of spectrum frequencies that the operators have is very low compared to any other similar market and the population is very high. Networks are very congested, and I think new spectrum availability to operators will help on that front. You will have more spectrum, which is the highway for digital infrastructure, so it will, in my opinion, enable the youth of Pakistan to innovate more and the country can tap into huge growth potential because most of the population is young. Think of it this way, who would have thought about how much capacity you need in your PC, and one could argue that they can do it on their Commodore 64 or would have been happy with Windows 95, right? Which would make the world very different. So, this is the type of thing operators and government should think about.
Haamiz: How do you plan to compete with Chinese competitors? Because most of the telecom operators right now are operating using Huawei or ZTE telecom equipment and infrastructure.
Mikko: I believe that if you’re on time, you’re late. I lived in China for three years and I can speak a bit of Mandarin, enough to understand the strengths of our competition. The Chinese approach is being proactive, trying to sort out things in different ways. At Nokia, we have been investing heavily in our R&D to increase the competitiveness of our products and solutions and we can see already in the field that our 5G and overall network performances are best in class. One example is our investment in the system on chips where state-of-the-art chipsets are already present in our latest products allowing us to lead in performance, energy efficiency as well future proofness.
In addition, one of the key differentiators will be the culture and our people. I spoke a little bit about our Pakistani team, and what we do here, but Nokia’s purpose is to create technology that helps the world to act together and it’s not only about the technology. We take a really serious approach towards the health and safety aspect. I’ve seen in many African countries that we are different from our competition in this aspect.
We want everyone working for Nokia or for our partners and customers to go back home safely and I think that’s extremely important. It takes a lot to build a culture of health and safety and we have done this over the years. We have also been nominated for eight years in a row as one of the most ethical companies in the world. So, on top of our technology, we ensure all our processes are ethical. We take pride in making sure that when you deal with Nokia in Pakistan, you know what they say and what they do, and they will never be asking for anything wrong.
I also take a lot of pride in our social programs. We work with a lot of universities, and we have interns here who come to work with us. We work with multiple types of organizations – UNICEF is one of the good examples where we work on diversity and gender equality. I think those are the things that we do differently.
Another noteworthy difference is our service quality. Today we provide managed services in the country and also for the other suppliers. That would not be possible unless you had a talented team with the right approach. When I met with the customers who we serve, they were very happy, and I think that is good for our team to hear as well that they are doing a good job. What I would like to say though is that you should never feel satisfied. Every day try harder to think about that – if you’re on time you’re late, so it’s critical to strive for continuous improvement.
Haamiz: I would like to talk about what you were discussing with the minister, in terms of a few things which you can do for the country.
Mikko: If you think about what the minister is prioritizing, it’s a lot about building capacity and infrastructure. Firstly, if you think about the impact of digitalization in terms of healthcare which was one of the topics we discussed. That’s the biggest thing that 5G will affect. I told the minister that we are training people from Africa in Finnish universities as part of our contracts and deals. We discussed the service exports, and what we are doing. I think she was pleased to hear that. And then, of course, the incubation of new businesses. What we agreed with her is that we will select one or two things to show how Nokia and the government can work together.
Haamiz: One more thing I wanted to ask is if you’re looking to lock in a deal or a contract with another telco for network infrastructure anytime soon.
Adil: We are looking at all available opportunities in the market and evaluating whichever RFQs are coming. We are looking for growth in Pakistan as Mikko said. Out of the 71 markets in Nokia Middle East and Africa, 10 markets were picked by the management for growth and Pakistan is one of those 10. We are not looking only at tier 1 wireless operators rather we are looking at tier 2 operators to grow our business. We have already secured two new customers in the last 12 months, and we are looking for more.
Haamiz: That’s what I wanted to know. Yeah.
Adil: We are looking for all the possible opportunities. We are also focusing a lot on enterprise business as well. Nokia has a large market share of private wireless networks, and it is one of the fastest-growing verticals globally. We are working on opportunities where either we go with the operators or via channel partners to grow our enterprise networks because they use different business models.
Haamiz: Alright. That’s pretty much all of it, I think. Thank you for your time.
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