Telenor Pakistan (Pvt.) Limited (

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
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Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

owned by

Telenor Group Telenor ASA ( or ) is a Norwegian majority state-owned multinational telecommunications company headquartered at Fornebu in Bærum, close to Oslo. It is one of the world's largest mobile telecommunications companies with operations worldwide, ...

, which is an international provider of voice, data, content and mobile communication services in 9 markets worldwide in Scandinavia and Asia. Telenor started out as a public company in 1855. Irfan Wahab Khan is the current CEO of Telenor Pakistan since August 2016. Currently, Telenor Pakistan has a total subscriber base of 49 million with 26% cellular market share in Pakistan and more than 1,300 employees. Since its launch in 2005, the company has made an investment of more than $5 billion.

History

License

Telenor acquired a license for providing

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...

services Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a p ...

in Pakistan in April 2004, and launched its services commercially in

Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former cap ...

Islamabad Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital T ...

, and

Rawalpindi Rawalpindi ( or ; Urdu, ) is a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is the fourth largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad, and third largest in Punjab after Lahore and Faisalabad. Rawalpindi is next to Pakistan's ...

on 15 March 2005; it expanded its services to

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city. ...

Faisalabad Faisalabad (; Punjabi/ ur, , ; ), formerly known as Lyallpur ( Punjabi, Urdu: لائل پور), named after the founder of the city, but was renamed in 1977 in honour of late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. It is the 3rd largest city of Pak ...

and

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part ...

on 23 March 2005. Telenor Pakistan's corporate headquarters are in Islamabad, with regional offices in

Peshawar Peshawar (; ps, پېښور ; hnd, ; ; ur, ) is the sixth most populous city in Pakistan, with a population of over 2.3 million. It is situated in the north-west of the country, close to the International border with Afghanistan. It is ...

, Lahore, Faisalabad,

Multan Multan (; ) is a city in Punjab, Pakistan, on the bank of the Chenab River. Multan is Pakistan's seventh largest city as per the 2017 census, and the major cultural, religious and economic centre of southern Punjab. Multan is one of the List ...

, Hyderabad, Quetta and

Inauguration

The official opening of Telenor Pakistan was held in Islamabad in which former president of Pakistan

General Pervez Musharraf General Pervez Musharraf ( ur, , Parvez Muśharraf; born 11 August 1943) is a former Pakistani politician and four-star general of the Pakistan Army who became the tenth president of Pakistan after the successful military takeover of th ...

was the guest of honor and was attended by Telenor delegation headed by president and CEO of Telenor Group

Jon Fredrik Baksaas Jon Fredrik Baksaas (born 1954) is the Chairman of the GSMA and until August 2015 the CEO of Telenor. He now serves as a special adviser to the telecommunications company's Group Executive Management team. Among the longest-serving top executives ...

along with then CEO of Telenor Pakistan Tore Johnsen. The first call at the inauguration was made by former President Pervez Musharraf to the prime minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg, who was visiting Australia at the time.

Inauguration of New Headquarters in Islamabad

Telenor Pakistan's new headquarter named '345' was inaugurated in Islamabad on 1 November 2017 by the then prime minister of Pakistan Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. The new headquarter was built at a cost of $80 million.

Operations

Coverage

Telenor Pakistan covers more than 80% of Pakistan's population in urban and rural areas with a network of over 12,000 cell sites of which 80% are 3G and 70% are 4G enabled. The company has been awarded a number of projects under Universal Service Fund (USF) of which the one currently in progress in the Broadband for Sustainable Development (BSD) program under which more than 100 new cell sites will be established to bring connectivity to 1.7 million in Dera Ismail Khan and Mohmand Agency. In the past, Telenor worked on USF Projects for cell site installation in Bahawalpur-Cholistan district in 2009 and provision of 3G services in Kohistan district in 2017.

Radio Frequency

Sales and distribution

Telenor Pakistan's distribution network has over 220,000 touch points across Pakistan that include franchises, ''sahulat ghars'' and retailers that offer GSM products and Easypaisa services. In 2017, company owned customer sales and service centers were converted to Digital Customer Touch Points that include Self Service Booths, IVR, web and social media customer services.

Next generation mobile services (NGMS)

Telenor is the first to officially launch 4.5G (

LTE Advanced LTE Advanced (LTE+) is a mobile communication standard and a major enhancement of the LTE (telecommunication), Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard. It was formally submitted as a candidate 4G to ITU-T in late 2009 as meeting the requirements of t ...

) in Pakistan. It has done so by aggregating two 4G bands, FDD-LTE Band 5 (850 MHz) and FDD-LTE Band 3 (1800 MHz), a portion of which has been re-farmed for 4G, it was previously used on the 2G (

GPRS General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data standard on the 2G and 3G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was established by European Telecommunications Standards Insti ...

EDGE Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...

) network. Telenor's LTE-A network was initially available in all major cities of Pakistan.

VoLTE

After conducting trials and internal testing, Telenor Pakistan launched

Voice over LTE Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is an LTE high-speed wireless communication standard for mobile phones and data terminals, including Internet of things (IoT) devices and wearables. VoLTE has up to three times more voice and data capacity than older 3G U ...

(VoLTE) on 29 January 2019. This makes it the first network in Pakistan to launch VoLTE. Telenor's VoLTE in Pakistan is based on an open source platform and has been developed in-house. Initially, support for other smartphone OEMs was not enabled despite claims of it being supported. Recently, Telenor's VoLTE services were enabled for select smartphone models, such as Oppo and

Realme Realme (stylized as realme) is a Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer based in Shenzhen, Guangdong. It was founded by Li Bingzhong (known as Sky Li) on May 4, 2018, who was former vice president of Oppo. Started originally as a sub-brand o ...

5G Trials

On 13 March 2020, Telenor had successfully conducted 5G Trials, achieving connectivity speeds in excess of 1.5Gbit/s. This also marked 15 years of its operation in Pakistan.

Easypaisa

In 2008, Telenor acquired majority shares of Tameer Microfinance Bank Limited for its mobile financial services project. They named the branchless banking service "Easypaisa" and launched it in October 2009. Easypaisa was Pakistan's first branchless banking deployment. Later 'Mobile Wallet' was introduced where normal Telenor Pakistan subscribers could now open a mobile account and make transactions themselves using their cellphones. Easypaisa was cited by CNN as the "model to follow" in launching mobile banking services. Easypaisa is Pakistan's first and largest mobile money service and third largest in the world (according to CGAP), catering to over 18 million customers. It currently has over 75,000 agents across Pakistan. In October 2014 Telenor Easypaisa introduced several types of accounts at different levels. Tameer Bank was acquired by Telenor Group in 2016 to become Telenor Microfinance Bank and Easypaisa became a part of the bank. ANT Financial Group which owns the global payment platform Alipay, acquired 45% stake in Telenor Bank for $184.5m in March, 2018.

Digital ecosystem

Telenor Pakistan started off as a cellular service provider in 2005, but has diversified its offerings. Telenor Pakistan offers a number of 4G-enabled handsets including Telenor Infinity E3, Telenor Infinity E2 and Telenor Infinity A2. The company also provides its customers branded mobile handsets from Samsung, Apple and Motorola, in addition to 4G MiFi and 4G Wingle and 3G broadband devices such as 3G Wingle. The company launched Digital Customer TouchPoints in the form of kiosks. Telenor Velocity is Pakistan's first telco-led accelerator. Telenor Pakistan has entered into partnerships with various stakeholders. Telenor Pakistan collaborated with UNICEF to implement digital birth registration through cellular devices. Telenor Pakistan has collaborated with the government on various initiatives that include rehabilitation of middle level public schools in Punjab, establishing an Open Mind Pakistan Assistive Technology Training Center to assist people with disabilities, and creating services to support the agriculture sector through its Connected Agriculture Platform for Punjab (CAPP) and Khushaal Zamindaar ("prosperous landlord") programs to facilitate farmers to improve yields & alert farmers to unfavorable weather conditions.

Awards

Telenor Pakistan has won a number of awards. In 2011, it won the ''Prime Minister of Pakistan Trophy for Largest Foreign Direct Investment (Telecom Sector)'' which was awarded by the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industries. Telenor Pakistan and Tameer Microfinance Bank's Easypaisa won the Shaukat Khanum Social Responsibility Award in 2011. Easypaisa also won the Best Mobile Money Transfer Entrant of the Year Award at the Mobile Money Awards in 2011. In 2012, Easypaisa was declared as the third largest mobile money service by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP). In 2014, Easypaisa won the Best NFC/Mobile Money Product or Service and Best Mobile Product or Service for Women in Emerging Markets awards at the 19th

GSMA The GSM Association (commonly referred to as 'the GSMA' or ''Global System for Mobile Communications'', originally ''Groupe Spécial Mobile'') is an industry organisation that represents the interests of mobile network operators worldwide. More ...

Global Mobile Awards in Barcelona, Spain. Telenor Pakistan was named the Best Place to Work in Telecom Industry by Engage Consulting and PSHRM in 2017. At the 2018 Pakistan Advertisers Society (PAS) Awards, the company won Best in Telecommunications and Best in PR awards for its campaigns. Telenor Pakistan was awarded the "Best Practice Award" by Center for Global Inclusion at the Diversity and Inclusion Conference 2018.

Financial Performance

Telenor Pakistan has achieved a gross sales of Rs. 25 billion for the quarter Oct-Dec, 2020.

References

External links

* {{Telenor Mobile phone companies of Pakistan Telenor Privately held companies of Pakistan Pakistani subsidiaries of foreign companies Internet service providers of Pakistan Companies based in Islamabad