PTCL’s acquisition of Telenor May Suffer Delay Due to Competitors’ Concerns

By Newztodays Team

PTCL’s acquisition of Telenor Pakistan may suffer a delay as the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) has received concerns from the competitors.

Competitors are worried about Telenor Pakistan being bought by PTCL, according to the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) on Monday.

It’s a big deal in Pakistan’s telecom world because it means PTCL will join forces with Telenor, which will make them nearly as big as Jazz, the country’s largest telecom company.

PTCL applied to buy 100 percent of Telenor Pakistan’s shares back on February 29, 2024, but they didn’t pay the right fee at first. PTCL’s loss jumped to Rs. 14 billion in 2023

They fixed that on March 6, 2024. The CCP needs more info from PTCL’s legal team to finish checking everything out.

Once they have all the documents, they’ll take about 30 days to make sure everything is okay.

Another company’s concerned too. They think PTCL buying Telenor will leave fewer competitors in Pakistan’s telecom market and slow down the whole process.

Right now, the CCP is busy with 21 applications, including PTCL’s purchase of Telenor. This kind of big merger has happened before, like when Jazz (which used to be Mobilink) bought Warid in 2016.

During that time, the CCP found out that Telenor International owned part of VimpelCom, Mobilink’s parent company.

They worried this could give too much power to the merged companies, so they told VimpelCom to be careful not to do anything that would harm competition in Pakistan’s telecom world.