Telenor Pakistan

Telenor Pakistan (Pvt.) Limited (Urdu: ٹیلی نار پاکستان) is a Pakistani wireless network operator headquartered in Islamabad, Pakistan. Khurrum Ashfaque is the current chief executive officer (CEO).

Telenor started its operations in Pakistan in March 2005. Over the years, Telenor invested more than $2 billion in terms of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Pakistan. In December 2023, Telenor ASA decided to sell its subsidiary, Telenor Pakistan, to PTCL for $385 million.

As of May 2024, Telenor Pakistan has a total subscriber base of 44 million in Pakistan, among which 24 million are 4G/LTE subscribers. With a market share of 23%, it is currently the third largest mobile phone network in Pakistan.

History
Telenor, a Norwegian telecommunications company, acquired a license for providing GSM services in Pakistan in April 2004, and launched its services commercially in Karachi, Islamabad, and Rawalpindi on 15 March 2005; it expanded its services to Lahore, Faisalabad and Hyderabad on 23 March 2005. Telenor Pakistan's corporate headquarters are in Islamabad, with regional offices in Peshawar, Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan, Hyderabad, Quetta and Karachi.

In November 2017, Telenor Pakistan inaugurated its new headquarter named 345. The new headquarter was built at a cost of $80 million.

Acquisition by PTCL Group
After Telenor ASA announced in November 2022 that they would leave the Pakistani market, it was announced that PTCL Group would acquire 100% of Telenor Pakistan on 14 December 2023, subject to regulatory approvals. The Business Recorder reported that the sale was settled at ₨108 billion (US$385 million), while Dawn and NRK reported a price of NOK5.3 billion (US$493 million).

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.

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) 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/EDGE) 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 (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.

5G Trials
On 13 March 2020, Telenor had successfully conducted 5G Trials, achieving connectivity speeds in excess of 1.5 Gbit/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 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.