One of the world's largest mobile operators, Vodafone, plans to enter the Uzbek market. This was announced by Farkhod Mamatjanov, the founder of the textile company UzTex Group, the main shareholder of InfinBank and owner of other assets, at a meeting with the president on August 20 in Nukus.
"We have commenced a new project. You talked about digitalization at a meeting yesterday. In order to work at lightning speed, we need lightning-fast Internet. You gave the order to attract a foreign brand. We have started work on launching 5G Standalone mobile communications in Uzbekistan together with one of the prominent companies in the world, Vodafone," he said.
"The partner will be the UK brand Vodafone. We privatized the Perfectum company... We studied this matter, in order to reach businesses at the grassroots level, the Internet is needed. To this end, in partnership with the Uzcard company, we have jointly launched a revolutionary plan - the Vodafone company will be organized. God willing, it will be launched in the new year,” the entrepreneur said.
Farhod Mamatjanov said that the size of investment will be 250 million euros. The project is expected to be launched in the Q1 of 2025, and is to create 1,000 jobs.
Finnish Nokia will supply equipment and technologies.
“These technologies are already arriving, installation is underway. To implement this project, we attracted 100 million euros in investment from the Finnish Export Agency through Uzsanoatqurilishbank. We ourselves, the founders, are attracting 150 million euros... Until now, there were foreign and state [mobile] companies, now we are creating a national mobile operator,” he noted.
The businessman said that Vodafone “carefully studied Uzbekistan, economic and political changes in the country” before entering the market. Emirates Telecommunications Group Company PJSC (e& — Etisalat and), a UAE technology group, will also participate in the project as a technical partner, he said.
In October 2023, Perfectum announced that it had decided to implement 5G New Radio technology in Uzbekistan with the involvement of one of the world's leading developers and manufacturers of mobile communications systems, Nokia.
In March, it became known that the mobile operator Perfectum was fully privatized and transferred to a new owner. The operator's legal entity, Rubicon Wireless Communication LLC, is now 100% owned by businessman Abdumalik Iminov. Dmitry Shukov became the CEO.
