wi-tribe

In 2009, the wi-tribe group, owned by Qatar Telecom (now Ooredoo) launched its largest operations in Pakistan. In Pakistan, wi-tribe is operating in Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi.[2][3][4] Wi-tribe Pakistan is one of the only two telecoms in Pakistan that is an ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) approved employer.[5] Qatar Telecom invested in wimax technology which, was the leading technology at the time, and set up over 600 towers for base stations across its network at cost close to $200m.

In March 2016, wi-tribe was acquired by the HB Group from Ooredoo. This followed an Ooredoo Board decision to focus on its core telecoms business, which meant an exit from the Pakistan home broadband internet service provider market. The Citi Group advised and managed the sale of wi-tribe on behalf of Ooredoo.[6] Ooredoo had not invested in the upgrade of the network in recent years and its wimp technology was out of favour globally and a significant upgrade was required both in bandwidth and in the capital costs of upgrading the base stations across over 600 towers. Wimax was substantially now viewed as an end of life technology which only a handful of countries still operated.

Within weeks of acquisition, it was clear that the significant congestion on the network was having a hugely detrimental effect on the customer experience, leading to high levels of dissatisfaction and churn and as such required a rapid solution. The previous owners, Ooredoo (formerly Qatar telecom) had been considering increasing capacity and easing congestion since 2014 but uncertainty about its future led to indecision. The investment requirement, coupled with the fact that it was solely a broadband business made no long term sense for the large mobile operator who no longer viewed it as part of its core business and hence meant it was not viewed as a viable investment proposition. 

Inheriting huge difficulties, in month one the new management decided that an upgrade was crucial for survival and within three months they had invested heavily in improving its customer experience by doubling its spectrum bandwidth across Pakistan. By August 2016, the upgrade had been completed across the entire 600 plus wi-tribe base station towers network in Pakistan. 

  In November 2016, the management considered investing in 4G LTE home broadband to upgrade its services to meet customer expectations for speed and capacity. The wi-tribe board later announced that it would skip a generation and instead of adopting 4G technology, it would shift to 4.5G LTE Advanced (LTE-A) technology. 

In February 2017, wi-tribe announced that it had signed a contract with Huawei to upgrade its entire network from WiMAX to an LTE-A (4.5G) network, the most advanced broadband technology in the world.  

This deployment represented the first such network in South Asia and the Middle East operating 4.5G LTE-A on the 3.5 GHz spectrum (3500 MHz) band.[7] 

The new 4.5G LTE-A network was installed at Wi-tribe's Head Office in F-8 Islamabad, using equipment from Huawei, with whom wi-tribe signed a USD 15 million contract and a strategic partnership for upgrade of wi-tribes network to LTE-A covering a possibility of five cities, namely Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi, Lahore, and Faisalabad.[8] The network is currently undergoing large scale field tests having proven extremely successful in lab tests and will made available to the public in September 2017.[9] 

In September 2017, on schedule, Wi-tribe launched its 4.5G LTE Advanced services in Pakistan. In October 2017, Wi-tribe introduced Pakistan's first one terabyte package, which garnered much attention from local consumers. From 2018 wi-tribe rolled out its 4.5G LTE advanced network across Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. 

The President of Pakistan recognised the 4.5G achievement and awarded wi-tribe the Pakistan New Technology Innovation Award. [10] At the beginning of 2019 Abbas Bokhari, a veteran of the LDI industry, took over as the CEO.  

  In late 2018 the HB Group acquired Qubee, a fellow broadband operator from US-based private equity fund New Silk Route. Qubee’s network used Wimax technology and HB’s objective was to upgrade the technology and also create a business and corporate customer entity and shift the traditionally more challenging consumers to wi-tribe. [11]

In 2019, wi-tribe partnered with mobile operator Zong to complete the first successful first 5G trials in Pakistan[12] 

  Since 2019 the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority - Pakistan’s regulator, has been conducting a review for 5G and the possible reconfiguration of the Telecoms sector in the run-up to many licenses expiring in 2024. wi-tribe has been keen to renew its license so that it could invest to upgrade the whole of the network to 5G, however, without certainty on the license and the payback period for the investment being 9 years it has been waiting for a positive outcome with just 4 years left on the current WLL license.

The Pakistan Telecoms' regulator, the PTA, following months of consultation, has recommended the phasing out of the WLL regime in Pakistan. In Q4 of 2020 the PTA has recommended that all companies in the telecom sector, ranging from small broadband providers like wi-tribe to the former state-owned national telco, PTCL, will see their WLL licenses being phased out. In addition, the PTA has recommended that the spectrum is taken back so that it can be stacked together and auctioned for 5G. This spells disaster for companies like wi-tribe who unlike other telcos with WLL licenses, only delivers fixed wireless broadband services and will have to close its network down.

• wi-tribe Pakistan