Al Warid Telecom, owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Group, launched its GSM/GPRS services here on Thursday, becoming the seventh cell phone operator licensed by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). It claimed to connect 28 major cities with a total population of around 32 million. The launching of the newcomer was announced through banners and lamp-post cloth posters hanging throughout the cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad and later at a media lunch by the Scandinavian cell phone equipment suppliers, Ericsson. Besides the function organised by Ericsson, an investiture held at the residence of President Musharraf for the Abu Dhabi Group President Sheikh Nahyan and a "strategic partnership" agreement Al Warid signed with some other operators marked the launching.
The senior executives of the Ericsson had especially flown from Malaysia, the regional headquarters of the telecom equipment manufacturer and supplier. They said that their company had installed a turnkey project on which the Al Warid had launched its operations.
The project comprised supply of core and radio network equipment as well as a "comprehensive range of telecom services covering complete network design, rollout and service". Ericsson will also continue to manage the network beyond the launch.
Han Vestberg, Ericsson's Senior Vice President for Business Unit Global Services and Hamid Farooq, Chief Executive Officer, Warid Telecom, said it was a true "partnership in the real sense of the word".
They said they wanted to be the operators that Pakistanis will "choose to get best-connected in the country".
The media assembly was also addressed briefly by Zibber Mohiuddin, President, Ericsson Pakistan, saying that his firm strongly supported the vision of Al Warid to bring "high quality mobile services" to this country.
Answering questions, they said that Ericsson was present in more than 140 countries providing mobile and broadband Internet solutions through its high technology.
However, there was no word available immediately on the identity of the cities the newcomer connects and also its tariff. A statement circulated at the media lunch earlier in the day quoted Hamid Farooq, the CEO of Warid saying that his service will offer post-paid and prepaid services, short messaging service (SMS) and multimedia messaging service (MMS).
This, he claimed, was only the beginning of many innovative offerings that Warid Telecom had in the pipeline.