ISLAMABAD: Following the successful merger of leading telcos Ufone and Telenor-Pakistan, their parent companies had a change of leadership on Thursday, with both getting new CEOs.

Hatem Bamatraf, who served as president and CEO of PTCL and Ufone for the past five years, will now head Pak Telecom Mobile Ltd (PTML), which will be known as Ufone5G now.

The entity, which was previously under the control of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL), has now been separated and merged with Telenor.

Meanwhile, the PTCL Board of Directors temporarily appointed Group CFO Nadeem Khan as the interim CEO for a period of 14 days.

The development came after Telenor-Pakistan formally amalgamated into PTML following final statutory approval, issued by the Islamabad High Court on June 30.

The operations departments of both telecos are now merging the frequencies of both companies, with the blessing of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

“The subscribers of both Telenor and Ufone will experience fast service and better coverage in in Karachi, Hyderabad, Faisalabad and some other cities, as the networks have been merged in these areas,” a senior executive of the merged teleco said, adding, “The integration of billing mechanism, loading balance etc will at a later stage.” In the interim, SIMs and other products of Telenor-Pakistan will continue to remain on sale until a final decision in this regard.

As per the PTA data there were over 206m mobile subscribers by the end of May, and the largest telecom company was Jazz with 36.42 per cent of all mobile subscriber base, followed by Zong with 26.62pc shares. The total share of Ufone-Telenor Pakistan will now become 35.91pc.

Published in Dawn, July 3rd, 2026