If you use a Telenor SIM in Pakistan, you have probably heard by now that Telenor Pakistan has merged into Ufone. You may also have heard that your SIM is about to stop working, that you need to visit a franchise, or that your balance is going to be wiped. The first part is true. The rest is not.
This is the long version: what the merger actually is, what it changes for the SIM in your phone, and — the part almost nobody covers — the specific conditions the regulator attached to its approval, several of which are worth money to you.
What actually happened
Telenor Pakistan no longer exists as a separate company. It was formally amalgamated into Pak Telecom Mobile Limited (PTML), the licensee that operates Ufone, which sits under the PTCL group. The Islamabad High Court sanctioned the scheme of amalgamation and the transaction closed in the first days of July 2026.
"Amalgamated" is the word that matters. This was not one company buying another and running it as a subsidiary alongside its own. Telenor Pakistan's licence, spectrum, assets and subscriber base were absorbed into PTML, and the legal entity that used to be Telenor Pakistan Pvt Ltd was dissolved into it. What is left is one operator with roughly 72 million subscribers — about 35.7% of Pakistan's mobile market, and second only to Jazz.
The deal itself is older than the completion date. Telenor Group and the PTCL group signed the share-purchase agreement back in December 2024, and clearance took the better part of eighteen months: a Competition Commission of Pakistan review, then the PTA's approval with conditions, then the High Court sanction that made the amalgamation effective. If you saw a story in early 2026 saying the merger was "done", that was the agreement stage. July 2026 is when it actually happened.
The sequence, briefly
| When | What |
|---|---|
| December 2024 | Telenor Group and the PTCL group sign the agreement to transfer Telenor Pakistan |
| 2025 | Competition Commission of Pakistan reviews and clears the transaction |
| Mid-2026 | PTA approves the merger, with consumer-protection and quality conditions attached |
| 1 July 2026 | Islamabad High Court sanctions the scheme of amalgamation |
| 2 July 2026 | Telenor Pakistan is reported merged into PTML; it ceases to be a separate entity |
What did not change
Almost everything you interact with day to day.
- Your SIM. It keeps working. There is no swap, no re-verification, no franchise visit.
- Your number. Unchanged. 0345, 0346, 0347 and the rest of the Telenor series are yours as before.
- Your balance. Carried over. Nothing was zeroed at midnight on the merger date.
- Your active bundles. Still running, and protected for a period — see the next section.
- Your codes. *345# still opens the self-service menu. Balance, packages, offers: same place.
This is normal for a merger of this size. Two mobile networks are not combined by flipping a switch. Core network, billing, provisioning and customer systems get integrated over many months, and the whole point of doing it slowly is that subscribers do not notice. If your service is going to change, you will notice it as a gradual thing — a different bundle menu, a rebranded app — rather than as an outage one morning.
The PTA conditions are the part worth reading
The regulator did not approve this merger unconditionally. It attached a set of consumer-protection requirements, and they are genuinely useful to know, because they are the difference between "the operator can do whatever it likes now" and "here is exactly what it cannot do to you."
Your existing package is protected for at least three months
Customers are entitled to keep using their existing packages for a minimum of three months after the merger. If you are on an older bundle with pricing that no longer exists in the current lineup, that bundle does not get cancelled out from under you the week the networks combine.
Practically: if you have a legacy package you like, this is the window to check what the equivalent costs today, so you are not surprised when the protection period ends. Our overview of the current lineup is on the Telenor packages page, with the detail split across call packages and internet packages.
Nothing can auto-renew without your explicit consent
Subscription bundles cannot roll over automatically unless you have actually agreed to it. This one is easy to underrate. Auto-renewal on a package you have stopped using is one of the most common ways prepaid balance quietly disappears, and the condition means the operator has to have your consent on record rather than treating silence as agreement.
If you are seeing renewals you do not remember approving, that is worth a complaint to the operator, and the PTA condition is the thing to cite.
A free balance save service, mandated within 60 days
The PTA required a free balance-save facility to be in place within 60 days of the merger. The code is *342#.
What it does: it stops your main balance being consumed at pay-as-you-go data rates once your data bundle runs out. Without it, the sequence that empties a prepaid account is dull and familiar — your bundle expires mid-scroll, the phone keeps using data, and it comes out of your balance at per-MB rates until you notice. Dial *342# once and that route is closed.
Every network has one of these now: Jazz *275#, Zong *4004#, Ufone *6611#, Telenor *342#. If you have never dialled it, do that before you finish this article. We have the full walkthrough on the Telenor balance save code page.
No value-added services switched on quietly
VAS — ringback tones, subscription content, the little Rs 2-a-day services — cannot be activated without verified customer approval, and they have to be easy to see and easy to switch off. If something is charging you and you cannot find where it was turned on, it should not have been turned on.
Coverage and speed floors the operator has to meet
The merger came with quality-of-service commitments rather than vague promises. Coverage and capacity are not permitted to fall below pre-merger levels, and there are median download-speed targets on a schedule:
| By | Median download speed target |
|---|---|
| 2 years | 20 Mbps |
| 4 years | 35 Mbps |
| 9 years | 50 Mbps |
Whether those get enforced is a separate question, and nine years is long enough for a target to become someone else's problem. But they exist in writing, which is more than most consumers get out of a telecom merger.
"On-net" means three networks now
This is the change most likely to actually affect your monthly spend, and it is easy to miss because nothing about it is announced loudly.
On-net minutes in Telenor bundles now cover calls to Telenor, Ufone and PTCL numbers. Before the merger, a call to a Ufone number came out of your off-net allowance — the small, expensive one. Now it comes out of the on-net pool, which in most bundles is ten to thirty times larger.
If a decent share of the people you call are on Ufone or PTCL landlines, your effective minutes just went up substantially without you changing package. It is also worth re-reading the bundle you are on: a package you rejected because the off-net allowance was too small may now be the right one.
What happens to the Telenor name
Here the honest answer is that nobody outside the company knows the timing.
What has been reported is the direction: both the Telenor and Ufone brands are expected to be retired gradually in favour of the parent group's "e&" brand. That is a multi-year exercise — signage, SIM packaging, app identity, retail, advertising — and no forced change applies to customers as a result of it. Your SIM does not stop working because a logo changes.
Our advice is the same as for anything else in this transition: the My Telenor app is where an official change gets announced first. Not an SMS from an unknown number, not a WhatsApp forward.
The My Telenor app and the daily quiz
Both still work. The app is still the app, and the Test Your Skills quiz still runs daily with free MBs for correct answers. We publish the verified answers every morning on our homepage, and the back catalogue is in the archive.
If the app is rebranded during the transition, we expect the quiz to move with it rather than disappear, because it is one of the most-used features in a telecom app in this market. That is an expectation, not a promise from anyone. We check daily and will say so here if it changes — there is a running merger update feed for exactly that.
If you are coming to this after a gap, our My Telenor app guide covers the current layout.
Scams to expect right now
Every large telecom transition brings a wave of these, and this one is no different. The pattern is always the same: manufactured urgency about something the merger supposedly requires you to do.
- "Your SIM will be blocked after the merger — verify now." No verification is required. The merger does not block SIMs.
- "Send your CNIC to keep your number." Your number is not at risk, and nobody legitimate collects CNIC details over WhatsApp.
- "Dial this code to transfer your balance to the new network." There is no new network to transfer to; your balance is already there. Codes like this are usually call-forwarding or OTP-harvesting.
- "Merger bonus — claim 50 GB free." Real offers appear in the My Telenor app and on official channels, not in a forwarded message with a shortened link.
The rule that covers all of them: if it did not come from inside the app or from a number you can verify, treat it as fake. No legitimate operator process in this merger requires you to do anything at all.
What we would actually do this week
- Dial *342# and turn on balance save. It is free, it takes ten seconds, and it is the single most useful thing in this whole article.
- Check what you are subscribed to via *345#, and turn off anything you do not recognise while the no-auto-renewal condition is fresh.
- If you are on an old package, look up what the current equivalent costs before the three-month protection window closes.
- Recount your on-net minutes with Ufone and PTCL numbers included. You may be on the wrong bundle for the new arithmetic.
- Ignore every SMS about SIM verification.
What is still unclear
Worth being straight about the open questions, because the confident answers circulating on this are mostly guesses:
- When the brand actually changes, and whether Telenor-branded SIMs get reissued or simply run out.
- What happens to package pricing after the three-month protection. Consolidation usually means fewer, simpler bundles, which is good for clarity and not always good for price.
- How 5G fits in. The merged operator is a serious spectrum holder now; our Pakistan 5G guide tracks the auction and rollout separately.
- Whether eSIM provisioning gets unified across the combined network — see the eSIM in Pakistan guide.
Frequently asked questions
Is Telenor Pakistan closing down?
No. Telenor Pakistan was merged into PTML, the company that operates Ufone, in July 2026. The legal entity is gone; the service is not. Your SIM, number, balance and packages all continue on the combined network.
Do I need to change my SIM or number?
No. Nothing is required of you. Any future SIM change would be announced in the My Telenor app first, and anyone contacting you to demand verification is running a scam.
Will my existing package still work?
Yes, and under the PTA's conditions you can keep using it for at least three months after the merger. Activation codes including *345# keep working throughout.
Do on-net minutes now include Ufone numbers?
Yes. On-net in Telenor bundles now covers Telenor, Ufone and PTCL numbers, which is a much larger pool than before.
What is the free balance save code?
Dial *342#. The PTA required a free balance-save service within 60 days of the merger; it stops your main balance being spent at pay-as-you-go rates when a data bundle runs out.
Will the Telenor brand disappear?
Eventually, most likely. Reporting points to both Telenor and Ufone being retired in favour of the group's "e&" brand, but gradually, and with no forced change for customers in the meantime.
Does the daily quiz still work?
Yes. The My Telenor app and the Test Your Skills quiz are still running, and we post the verified answers every morning.
Not sure which number your SIM is using?
There are a few ways to check without a working balance — the codes are on our Telenor number check page.
Sources: reporting on the merger and the PTA's approval conditions from ProPakistani, Dawn, Business Recorder, The News and TechJuice, July 2026. Package details change frequently and vary by SIM and region — confirm current prices in the My Telenor app or by dialling *345# before you subscribe to anything. Last reviewed 2 August 2026.