Mobile Telecom Companies in Pakistan
A leading Islamabad based mobile telecom operator of Pakistan is shopping for a new public relations agency based in Islamabad to replace its current agent. But that is not the news.
Islamabad is the hub of mobile telecom businesses in Pakistan. The reason for frequent switches from one agency to another, especially in the city of Islamabad, is the fact that most of the PR agency businesses are headquartered in Karachi and are by management practices H.O centric with little or no delegation. The generally slim client servicing structure, majorly borrowed from the advertising agency business model, is structured around the client services or account management model whereby a single team of upto 2 members service an account/client. This applies to all major PR agencies in Pakistan. Now for such slim structures the service and quality assurance comes from the very quality of the assigned resources to an account/client. In general practice any such account team handles upto 3-5 PR clients of varying sizes. With little specialization and no investment in the professional development of the client servicing team and no concept of modern management such as delegation and team empowerment the client is the eventual bearer of poor performance. Further due to the extensive market of the telecom service providers their need for having on-ground PR presence across major cities and stations of Pakistan is not effectively met.
This trend has continued for sometime now and has hurt the PR agency business from growth and recognition. The key players in the PR business must take long-term measures to create a nourishing environment for the business to grow. If this does not change soon, the PR clients will tend to, as is already observed, resource players from advertising industry with much bigger organizational size, stronger financial muscle, widest presence, with highly experienced and much more experienced client services teams.
This signifies the importance of maintaining a full fledged and robust PR services infrastructure in Islamabad, which in practice, is difficult to find. The most important aspect is that of qualified and experienced human resource specifically from the mobile telecom sector itself. The matter of fact remains that all branch offices of PR agencies in Islamabad play the role of a coordinating office with all critical support functions like, copy writing, creative and media based at the head-office only.
Warid, Ufone, Mobilink, Telenor and Zong are the mobile telecommunication service providers in the Pakistani Mobile Telecommunications industry. With a total market size of almost 109 million subscribers as of June 2011 the Pakistani mobile telecom industry is getting bigger, diversified and more challenging. In such complex competitive circumstances it becomes imperative to have cutting-edge communication partners for any mobile telco not only to win but for their very survival.
Public Relations Pakistan 