Pakistan is abuzz with the recent awarding of 3G & 4G cellular licenses after a wait that seemed to stretch forever. Yesterday, PTA held the auction and all four participating operators walked away with 3G licenses. Zong also emerged as the dark horse, being the only operator winning a 4G license as well. Telenor, Mobilink and Ufone all snagged 3G ones. On the other end, Warid stayed home and munched pop-corn.

As expected, the telcos are presently engaged in a frenzy promoting their 3G as the best and, especially Zong, cockily poking fun at the mere 3Gers. Also, as expected, all telcos have proceeded to emblazon stickers to their logos announcing their 3G/4G status. With the exception of Telenor’s simple approach, every single one of these stickers is very tacky.

Mobilink is using a rather perplexing graphic to promote its 3G services. A weird cross between a 3, lower-case G and a random dot is what you’ll be seeing as the official Mobilink identifier of 3G service.

mobilink 3g

Telenor’s strategy is quite interesting as it is seemingly downplaying the 3G status as just a mundane episode that had to happen anyway. This puts Telenor apart, in a positive way, from the other carriers who are making quite a ruckus of the situation.

telenor 3g

Ufone made use of their trademark humor in the 3G announcement TVC. Well played.

ufone 3g

Warid, absolutely unfettered by the G-talk, continues to promote its dual-number-one-sim-dual-number-or-something-like-that feature. To each their own, perhaps.

warid no 3g

And the real winner of this war, Zong, displayed great confidence even before the auction when they subtly updated their logo to project a sharper, edgier image. After the win, they are doing what they can do right now: poking cheeky fun at the other poor, 3G-only operators. Reminiscent of BMW/Audi rivalry advertising, all we can say is Zong has the ‘license’ to do it!

zong 4g

bmw