Wateen’s Initial Public Offering

I got this in my mailbox today (since I am a Wateen consumer since Dec 2007)

Dear Valued Customer,

Wateen Telecom is a group company of Abu Dhabi group. Abu Dhabi Group is one of the largest business groups in the Middle East and the one of the largest foreign investor in Pakistan. Abu Dhabi group owns Wateen through Warid Telecom International and Bank Alfalah Limited which hold 79.8% and 20.0% shares respectively.

Wateen’s successful four years of operations in the telecom industry of Pakistan speak for itself, as it successfully deployed the largest commercial and first nationwide 3.5 GHz WiMax network rollout in the world covering 22 cities and 1,100 sites with over 160,000 wireless broadband customers (60% of wireless Broadband market), 12,000 Broadband customers over fiber and 2,700 corporate links (including 26 commercial banks) as well as major GSM and telecom operators as its customers. Wateen Telecom is also the largest operator of satellite services in the country and now offering services to a few telecom operators in Afghanistan. Additionally, optic fiber network spanning over 10,000 KM (7,000 KM deployed and 3,000 KM under deployment) across Pakistan and in all major cities provides a solid backbone for Wateen’s offerings. Wateen also has been acknowledged as the largest alternative LDI operator in Pakistan (with over 1 billion minutes of traffic volume) duly acknowledged by the regulating authority PTA.

Wateen Telecom Limited is now offering 110m shares with an additional Green-shoe option of 90m shares amounting to PKR 2 bn. The IPO will be offered to institutional investors and general public at par value of PKR 10 per share and subscription will be open on 20th & 21st April 2010.

To subscribe, fill the IPO form and submit it to designated banks along with Cheque/PO/Demand Draft in favor of “Initial Public Offering of Wateen Telecom Limited”. Subscription can be made in PKR 5,000 or multiples of it.

Forms and details are available at www.wateen.com, all Wateen Business Centers and Franchise in addition to designated banks or call us at 111-365-365

Best Regards,

Wateen Telecom Limited

The first thought that comes to my mind is … is Wateen really wrapping up?

Warid Postpaid Issues – had to MNP my cell number

I moved from Warid to Ufone in April, I forgot to mention that. Thanks to MNP the move was smooth and easy.

Now let me tell you why I moved. First of all, there are billing issues in Postpaid. They have two SMS packages

  • Zoom Limited SMS Package offering 750 messages per month and
  • Zoom Unlimited SMS Package offering 7,500 messages per month

When you activate any of these packages (for the first time) the package is charged double. So e.g. you activate Zoom Unlimited and it costs approx Rs. 300 per month so it will be charged twice, once as ACTIVATION CHARGES and second as monthly charges (WTF!!)

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