ISLAMABAD, April 4: Chief Executive of China Mobile Wang Jianzhou announced its rollout, with a massive investment exceeding $1.5 billion and introducing attractive packages when it is officially launched on Saturday evening.

Mr Wang Jianzhou, who has specially flown into the capital for the launch, told Dawn on Friday that China Mobile was going to further heat up the already supercharged cell-phone industry by “pumping another $800 million into Pakistan’s telecom sector.”

China Mobile has injected more than $800 million into Pakistan’s telecom sector after a landmark takeover of Paktel’s operations late February 2007.

Shrugging off concerns about the country’s mobile sector already dominated by big operators, the China Mobile CE saw a considerable potential in the cell-phone market without getting into a “low-rate war.”

CM intends to change the business landscape by taking control in rural areas which Mr Wang Jianzhou considered as his company’s specialty.

Elaborating on his market penetration strategies, Mr Jianzhou suggested introduction of more value-added services, like mobile TV, mobile music, news, billing for subscribers specially the young population.

Expressing confidence in Pakistani mobile communications market, Mr Jianzhou said: “Based on our experiences in China, we have good understanding in emerging markets. We are very successful in fast growing economies and we would like to apply those practices here.”

Huge subscriber base and expertise was what made China Mobile different, Mr Jianjhou believed.

“We are already serving a 380 million subscriber base and can get good price when we roll out. And because of that we put our Pakistan procurement as part of CM centralised procurement programme and so it will lower our capital expenditure.”

As investors, the target was to make profit, he said, and hoped to get a better margin. “We will be investing another $800 million and hope we can get preferential policy as foreign investors.

Describing future plans of China Mobile, the Company’s CE said, “Pakistan is the right choice for international expansion and we will continue to improve and strengthen our network. We have 2,500 base stations today compared with the 900 when we took over last year. And our future investments will depend on our financial performances.”