Pakistan achieves highest teledensity in South Asia

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Muhammad Yasir
KARACHI: Despite having the highest teledensity—the number of telephones per 100 people in a region—the telecom sector grew by a paltry two percent during the current fiscal year.

Teledensity reached its all time high level of 60.6 by the end of third quarter of this fiscal year.

The cellular mobile phone sector has added more than 3.4 million subscribers in July-April with 0.3 million average monthly growth. The subscribers base marked more than one percent growth only in one month throughout the fiscal year and seen users’ contraction in a couple of month. Another flourishing sector, Wireless Local Loop, has been broadening its customer’s base with handsome growth. Its five major operators have added 171,569 connections on their network in three quarters of current fiscal year.

The Fixed Line Loop (FLL) or landline connection has continued to decline in the country, however, some new companies have witnessed modest growth in subscriber base. The number of landline subscribers has reduced to 3.7 million in December 2008 from 4.7 million in December 2007 as per PTA statistics whereas the FLL contributed 2.3 percent in overall teledensity.

Analysts of telecom sector said the penetration of telephony services is concentrated in few dozens cities of the country.

In metropolis, almost every user has more than one connection in his pocket to avail different special packages of all five mobile phone operators. They pointed out the cellular mobile phone and WLL operators are focusing to penetrate in the rural areas, one the other hand, FLL companies have introduced new call packages for attracting new and old customers in their networks.

PTA Chairman, Dr Muhammad Yaseen attributed the sluggish teledensity growth to the impact of global economic downturn, double-digit inflation and high taxes on the services. “Consumer’s eroding purchasing power has kept them at bay from using the telephony services particularly in the small cities and rural areas of the country,” he added.

Dr Yaseen sees the telecom sector growth will improve with the recovery of global and country’s economy and this revival will help in increasing the teledensity.

“The licenses of WLL and spectrums have been auctioned for Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Northern Areas, which will help in increasing the number of users,” he added

The network coverage area of the country has increased to 90 percent. PTA has completed establishment of 350 telecentres in various rural areas of the country, aimed at introducing telephony services in un-served areas. All these centres are working in four provinces of the country with the coordination of different operators.

Pakistan’s teledensity grew tremendously in the previous fiscal year by almost 14 percent mainly with the development of all its three sectors—Cellular, WLL and FLL.

The teledensity of India has reached 34.5 (362 million subscribers) followed by Bangladesh having 29 teledensity (46.50 users) in 149 million population.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...2009_pg5_6