ISLAMABAD, May 31: China Mobile Pakistan (CMPaK) — formerly Paktel Limited — on Thursday inked a $500million contract for network expansion with four leading vendors, Alcatel-Lucent Pakistan Ltd, Ericsson Pakistan Pvt Ltd, Huawei Technologies Paksitan Pvt Ltd and ZTE ZhongXing Telecom Pakistan Pvt Ltd.

With this agreement, CMPak, in their first venture outside China, will now extend its services into the Northern Areas of Pakistan.

"As a major step towards our goal of expanding our services rapidly, we have decided to award the expansion contract to four different vendors in Pakistan. They will be our strategic partners to execute the most aggressive expansion plan in the history of the country," said the CEO, CMPak Ltd, Guo Yonghong, at the signing ceremony.

He called CMPak’s expansion plan only the first step towards many more such initiatives they had planned for Pakistan.