Engineering Post Report
The Norwegian operator group Telenor is all set go ahead with the sale of its unit in Pakistan which has been struggling under the weight of intense competition and rising energy crisis .
In this regard, Telenor has started working with Citigroup for finding potential buyers for its Pakistani unit, the value of which could be worth $1 billion .
The future of Telenor Pakistan has been up for debate for a number of years. With four national mobile operators, Pakistan’s market is highly competitive, offering the operators little prospect for revenue growth. Indeed, despite Telenor Pakistan’s subscriber base had grown by 6 percent year-on-year by the end of 2021.
Telenor has been considering its future in all its Asian markets in recent months, recently forming Telenor Asia to centralize the management of its operations in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand.
Meanwhile, wireless operator Veon Limited is also in an advanced stage to sell its tower assets in Pakistan.
Veon has some 10000 to 12000 towers in Pakistan. The value of a tower is reported to be somewhere between $ 60000 to $ 80000 depending on the interest rates.
Veon was founded in Moscow in 1992 as VimpelCom, one of Russia’s first cellular phone providers. It has grown into a Dutch-domiciled telecommunications giant with more than 217 million customers in nine countries although Russia still accounts for about half of its revenue.
