Huawei and ZTE Corp on shortlist for Pakistan telecoms sell-off

The Pakistan government will soon invite foreign companies, including Chinese equipment suppliers Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp, to participate in the country's biggest telecommunications privatisation plan.

Speaking on the sidelines of the ITU Telecom Asia conference in Busan, South Korea, federal minister Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari of the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications said his government was planning to offload a stake of between 25 per cent and 45 per cent in the country's monopoly carrier to foreign investors.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Co Ltd (PTCL) is the country's only fixed-line carrier, with about five million phone lines. It also runs a mobile-phone unit that has 1.5 million users, or about 33 per cent of the country's total.

Huawei and ZTE are the key suppliers to PTCL and are bidding for a US$20 million contract to sell wireless local loop networks - known as xiaolingtong in China - to the carrier.

Both Huawei and ZTE declined to comment at this stage on the privatisation plans for PCTL.

The ministry will finalise its decision on how big a stake to sell to foreign investors in the next few weeks, before it publicly invites bids.