For all those who are criticising Ufone, Mobilink and Telenor for not going for a 4G licence, please understand that the companies are run by experienced professionals who don't just work on numbers.
If you think about it, 3G is a new tech in Pakistan. It needs time to settle in, after which the demand for 4G would increase. Abhi tou if zong starts selling off 4G, it won't be cheaper than a couple of thousands per month. How much of the population, do you think, would fork off thousands of rupees for faster Internet. Like a technology expert said in an interview with PTV, you need to give some time for a concept to mature before forcing another option on them.
Mobilink and Telenor's stance makes perfect sense.
Looking at the current market in the country, a 4G licence would benefit a carrier if they were to launch a wireless broadband service like PTCL EVO. Otherwise, very few people would pay the extremely high price for 4G speeds on their devices. (for those who don't know, it is speculated that 3G services would cost around 2k per month on average use. LTE would cost even more.)
Looking at the market dynamics here it was always clear that auctioning both 3G and 4G together was a mistake. Leaving aside the fact that the 3G packages are going to be expensive, how many of the 130 million mobile phone users have or can afford 3G handsets? According to estimates just 20% can.
And what to talk of 4G capable handsets. You'd be hard pressed to find one for less than 35k approx other then very few phones.
In such a scenario I think mobilink and Telenor made the right choice by not going for 4G. Our market is just not right for 4G right now. 3G needs to be given time to mature. The average user will be initially hard pressed to find genuine usage scenarios for 3G even. (And by average user I don't mean PW members most of whom own smart phones and are generally ahead of the curve technology wise as compared to the average Pakistani.)
This was posted on another forum and I agree with this statement.
