KARACHI: Long in the headlines for the much-awaited launch of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) services, Warid Telecom finally announced a formal rollout of its mobile broadband in six major cities from Friday.
As per the official announcement, the company will start its LTE services from Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi, Faisalabad and Gujranwala and offer free trials to its customers for seven days.
A Pakistani subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Group, Warid Telecom was the only cellular service provider in the country that refrained from participating in the spectrum auction of licences for third-generation (3G) and 4G mobile technologies held in April this year.
Later, the company announced that it would launch its LTE services, saying it had a technology-neutral licence. With the formal launch, Warid will shift from the existing 2G or GSMA network to the much-advanced LTE network.
It will be investing around $500 million over the next five years to expand the network across the country along with its technology partner, Ericsson, the company said in a statement.
“I am confident that with the trust and loyalty of our customers, Warid Telecom will rise to stellar heights within this new telecoms paradigm,” said Warid CEO Muneer Farooqui, who claimed that the company possesses the country’s largest post-paid customer base.
The company is aggressively working to further expand
its LTE footprint in Pakistan and aims to cover 10 more cities within the next 10 months and 20 cities in the next 20 months, the statement said.
Warid Telecom had a subscriber base of 13 million or less than 10% of Pakistan’s 139 million cellphone subscriptions as of May 2014, making it the smallest operator by subscriber base. However, it enjoys a large and loyal base of corporate or post-paid clients and is known mainly as a network dominated by urban customers.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 26th, 2014.
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A great service..clear voice quality..but when 4g warid is launching in haripur
Greetings, compliments to Abu Dhabi Group, Warid Telecom., the management, team members, and the customers who are lucky to have a genuine LTE, originated from the European Union ETSI. Pakistan being dominated by complex terminology of 4G, LTE dominated by the UAE based Etisalat which is mastered by the non standardised version of mobile services which has no clue of Electro-magnetic Interference which is most essential for interference with human brain which is emitted by the cellular transmitters, or RBS/BTS. Ericsson being a well recognised leader in reference to EMI which provide safe to human signal to humans. Putting aside the Service Center quality, which apart from the scientic discussions on LTE quality, and safe service is what I noticed Warid is delivering. This quality of signal, EMI is some thing which can only be imitated but not duplicated. I suggest the regulatory authority should also differentiate between the quality of service, signal, EMI between one service provider, and the other for mobile broad band, and change the image of Pakistan being the worst mobile broadband provider. Access to knowlede base on EMI is available and questionaire for EMI be sent for filling up may also be solicited.
Proud user of WARID since day one of its launch, never had any issue except low reception in some areas of karachi.
The only and the only advantage of Warid is of clear voice quality. Have to purchase another SIM for other mobile usage activities.
Please remove this video ad.
pathetic customer service! The only good point of this company is that it has clear voice qaulity and data speed otherwise rest of everything is headache in this company! Useless pkgz, highest call rates, pathetic customer service