Karachi: One of the largest business groups in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Hammad bin Khalifa Department of Projects (HBKDOP) is already in discussions to acquire a majority share in one of Pakistan’s largest independent broadband providers, Wi-Tribe.
The HBK group works in the Middle-East, Africa, South Asia, and Central Asia. The news come from official statements, with Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, chairman of the Arab Investment Development Authority (AIDA) and HBK Holdings, saying acquiring Wi-Tribe would allow his group to get a good position in Pakistan’s telecommunication game.
The Hamad Bin Khalifa Departments of Projects (HBK DOP) was founded by Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Nahyan to handle project investments through strategic joint venture partnerships.
“Wi-tribe investment opportunity provides HBK a footprint into Pakistan Telecom’s space as a firm foundation to consolidate the ongoing investment interest for the telecom infrastructure acquisition,” read a statement from the Sheikh.
Wi-Tribe, which has been un-operational in Karachi since July due to a dispute with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), has main offices in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi and until early 2016 was owned by Qatar Telecom. After that it was bought by the Pakistani conglomerate, HB International Investments.
Back in July, Wi-Tribe was at the center of a dispute with the company that provides its towers — edotco — which had terminated its connection. The payments scuffle came during the peak coronavirus days in the country, which is what Wi-Tribe officials have tried to pin the dispute on.
However, Wi-Tribe has slowly been losing ground and customers over the years. It was launched in Pakistan in July 2009 by Qatar-based Ooredoo QSC which sold the stakes of its subsidiary Wi Tribe Pakistan to HB Offshore Investment Ltd for around 32.7 million Qatri riyals in March 2016.
The customer base of company has only withered since then. There were 207,000 WiMAX users in Pakistan at the end of December 2015, just before its sale to the incumbent management. By July 2019 that figure had dropped to 26,512 and today it has further dropped to 16,245 by the end of May 2020.
Perhaps because of this, the majority shares acquisition is still not a done deal, even though it is definitely in discussions, as explained by Haris Hasan Khan, CEO of Emergent Telecommunications, a project arm of HB International Investments.
“The deal has not yet been finalized, but HBKDOP had shown interest in buying majority stakes,” he said in a statement given to Arab News. “They are interested in majority stakes, but this has not been finalised yet. I cannot give a figure, but it will be double digit US dollars, which means in the millions.”
Witribe did not lose customers to a dwindling wimax market. Karachi has over 20 professional ISPs operating in the city out of which only 3 operate outside DHA and Clifton. This should be a point of shame for PTA who can’t even make the entire city internet compliant in the 21st century. Because of the lack WAN infrastructures in KDA controlled areas of Karachi which is practically 80% of Karachi, there is a greater demand for wireless internet in these area generally because it can run seamlessly without the need for functioning copper cables or even fragile fiber optic setups. These physical cables are always subject to environmental deterioration as well as local ISP sabatoges. Witribe lost customers soon after being purchased by a local corporation, not because the demand for WiFi is dropping but because they treated customers like garbage. I was among their customers not by choice but because over the course of 5 years I was handed over from Wateen (incredible connection quality and customer care) to Qubee (good customer care, average internet connection quality) to finally witribe (rude customer service, terrible customer care, and horrible internet connection quality for a wimax). I still paid for wimax because the alternative was local ISP who provided no customer care and practically no internet for at least a third of the month (they still expect full price for services they never provided). I stayed on witribe till Wi-tribe was exposed in that scandle about how they handed their customers over to third party tower maintenance and customer service providers who were systematically killing the internet quality as well as the customer service standard of witribe. I gave up on witribe when one of their incompetent customer service representatives bluntly told me I should be grateful to them that I was getting even half the internet bandwidth I was paying them to provide. It was hands down the most insulting thing I had heard from a customer service representative. EDOTCO exposed how slimy witribe could get with their customers. After the internet went dark they spent one month telling customers to have patience while a submarine cable was being fixed, in the second month their scandle was exposed and they started pleading customers to support them against the evil “EDOTCO”, EDOTCO may have done something really unethical for an ISP operator but WITRIBE was worse for lying to the customers. They literally said they would compensate the customers who wait for things to settle down. Guess how they rewarded the customers who waited? I received a call 3 months after this whole mess started where one of their representatives simply told me they were taking down the towers in my area and they were terminating my service. News later reported they terminated around 94 connections in my area. They did not provide a transition to another ISP like qubee and wateen did, they did not compensate anyone as they had promised, they did not even apologize, they just said they were no longer going to provide service in the area and I should deal with it.
Witribe is singlehandedly killing the credibility of wimax services with their shit*y attitude towards their customers and their lack of awareness of their own network quality.