Ufone President and CEO Babar Khan has said the company's latest expansion plan with the investment of $550 million as its total investment would reach one billion dollars.
Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, he said the company's subscribers' base would be doubled within one and a half-years as soon as the current expansion was completed. At present, Ufone's customer base stands at around 8.5 million.
Giving the details of Ufone's latest expansion plan, he said it would not only change the current scenario of the local telecom industry, but also give new meanings to quality service.
"An expansion contract of this magnitude ($550 million) indicates Ufone's aggressive strategy towards market growth and expansion, in the wake of tremendous growth and potential of Pakistan's cellular service market." he said.
Babar Khan said the $550 million expansion plan focused on the expansion of the network in terms of capacity and coverage in the existing and new cities. Besides providing high-speed wireless data services based on EDGE technology and by the end of June 2007, Ufone would be covering more than 1,500 cities, towns, villages and all the major highways in the country.
The project was approved by the Ufone board, which reflected the commitment by the shareholders to invest in Ufone infrastructure and provide best quality network and facilities to the Ufone customers, in addition to the major investment commitment, Etisalat brings its extensive experience of telecom industry to Pakistan to ensure that the Ufone has the best network in the country.
Unfolding the details of this network expansion, he said that Ufone would be acquiring state-of-the-art network infrastructure based on Release-4 standard for future mobile communication, highly compatible with smooth and seamless migration to the 3G UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System).
The current expansion will specially focus on towns and villages in Sindh and Balochistan and major roads and highways along with upgrading the network in major cities and major highways already in Ufone network. This expansion will not only make Ufone network the largest in the country, but will also be providing latest high-tech services.
"Ufone is committed to providing best cellular service to its customers and in the same pursuit it is co-operating with local authorities in recovering the snatched or stolen sets. Ufone is following the guidelines given by the PTA in this regard and is all set to implement the regulator's guideline anytime," said Babar Khan.
He said it was imperative for blocking of stolen sets that the customers note down the IMEI code of their cell phones and providing the same to the authorities in case it was stolen or snatched.
He said that Ufone had already put in place a special system whereby if a reported set, whether stolen or snatched, was found operating, an SMS was sent to the customer informing him that the handset being used was stolen, for which his SIM was being blocked and she/he should contact CPLC.
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