The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is seeking assistance from the country’s diplomatic and trade channels for pursuing global telecom operators to invest in Pakistan.
The PTA is expediting its efforts for attracting more global telcos in the bidding for 3G/4G licenses, which will commence at the end of March.
PTA has written letters to Board of Investment (BoI) and different ministries including Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of IT and Telecommunication for helping it in communicating the proposal to its counterpart ministries of different countries and exploiting their relations for inviting global cellular companies to invest in the country, the Pakistan Observer quoted official sources in the authority as saying.
Pakistan has set a date of March 29 to hold its debut 3G auction, and has set the base price at $210 million and expects to allocate three 10-MHz blocks of 3G spectrum to the auction. The regulator expects 10-15 bidders to take part in the auction.
To meet the target number of bidders and achieve high value of the license in the bidding process, the regulator is already in contact with different international telecom operators, including Vodafone, DoCoMo, Orange, AT&T, which shown interest to bid for the upcoming 3G license auction in Pakistan.
It has sent Information Memorandum (IM) to foreign telecom operators for sharing policies, regulation of the country, economy and business situation of the telecom sector. They are in close contact with those cellular companies which have shown interest in the bidding process, and are providing them all the related information, officials told the Pakistan Observer.