Upgrading network infrastructure: Mobilink to invest $258 million in 2010

ISLAMABAD (Daily Times): Mobilink will invest $258 million in its network infrastructure as part of its annual development plan in the remaining calendar year, Chief Executive Officer and President Rashid Khan told Daily Times on Wednesday.

The subsidiary of Orascom Telecom Holding (OTH) will spend millions on its operations and upcoming infrastructure deployment projects in various cities and villages of the country.

According to the top official, the major amount of investment will be used on quality of voice, data and value-added services particularly mobile-commerce and broadband projects.

Operating in one of the most competitive markets in the region requires improvement and value additions in terms of offers and services through investment, Khan said. “Mobilink has maintained an aggressive posture in the wake of an overall stressful environment, which has enabled us to increase subscribers and revenue while providing unmatched connectivity to our subscribers.”

Mobilink is the biggest cellular phone company having largest subscribers base of more than 31.3 million or 32 percent of the overall mobile phone users in the country by the end of February 2010 as per Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) statistics.

The company has established more than 8000 cellular sites across the country. It has also the largest network coverage area in more than 10, 148 different cities and villages by the end of December 2009, PTA’s recent quarterly report said. 

Despite cutthroat competition and rising cost of operations, Mobilink had managed to earn decent revenue of Rs 103 billion in the last half of the current financial year 2009-10, which is 46 percent of the overall revenue of the cellular phone sector. With injecting cash into the capital, the overall investment of the Mobilink will cross $3.5 billion mark by end of 2010. Telecom analysts said the investment inflow will witness handsome growth in the upcoming financial years as the majority of the cellular phone companies have planned to inject their capital in network infrastructure development and for upgrading their quality of services. Earlier, Telenor and Zong had also announced their investment plans of about $380 million for the calendar year 2010. muhammad yasir