PTA gives go-ahead for Telenor, Ufone merger

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has granted technical approval for the merger of Telenor Pakistan and Ufone, and the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) will be informed of the development on Tuesday.

Since the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) is a listed company and Ufone is its key subsidiary, the company secretary will inform the PSX that Ufone was technically a part of PTCL.

Meanwhile, a senior PTCL official, responding to Dawn’s query, stated that no further approvals from the board were needed, as the required permissions for the takeover and merger of Telenor Pakistan had already been granted.

“Legal approvals are the next steps, and for that, an application for amalgamation will be filed in the Islamabad High Court soon,” the official added.

The amalgamation takes up to four weeks to complete, and matters related to court cases are cleared during the process.

Amalgamation process to take 4 weeks

Amalgamation process to take 4 weeks

“This is a legal requirement to check if the parties concerned do not have any litigation related to individuals, bank loans, tax authorities, consumers or other telcos in this case,” said a senior PTCL executive, adding that during the process the input is obtained from the State Bank, Federal Board of Revenue and legal departments from both the Telenor Pakistan as well as the PTCL.

Meanwhile, the NOC granted by the PTA allows Ufone to implement the integration process with Telenor Pakistan.

The backend technical teams of both companies will begin to converge on the spectrum and reduce the number of telecom towers.

The merged company of Telenor Pakistan and Ufone has around 26,000 telecom towers, many of which are located in close vicinity.

While the newly merged company can shut down such towers, the PTA has set conditions for towers shared by other telcos, including Jazz and Zong.

The PTA has also imposed another restriction: any franchisee must be given at least six months’ notice before their contract is terminated.

The existing Telenor SIM number will continue on the Ufone network.

Currently, there are around 202m mobile phone subscribers, including 74.19 million for Jazz and 53.90m for Zong. The total number of mobile subscribers for the merged company will be around 72.45m. However, it is expected that the number will drop by 10pc as many subscribers have SIMs from both Ufone and Telenor, and after the merger, these subscribers will shift to Jazz or Zong networks.

Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2026

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