SAARC: Pakistan-Growing Fairly

Pakistan, the sixth most populous country in the world, was one among the fastest growing telecommunications market in 2008 but the growth rate reduced to a great extent after the downfall of the country's economy.

The total teledensity of the country stands at 69%, which reflects that despite the slow economic growth, the nation is doing a fair job on the telecom front but still has a lot to do to emerge as a tough competitor for its Saarc counterparts.

The mobile teledensity of the country stands at 65% as of June 2011, with total subscribers reaching 100.8 mn, and with lakhs of subscribers adding up every month the number is increasing rapidly.

Widespread Operations

The country has 5 operational operators in the mobile segment including Mobilink, Warid Telecom, Telenor Pakistan, China Mobile Pakistan, and Ufone.

Mobilink with 33 mn subscribers as of June 2011 is a subsidiary of Orascom Telecom Holding with its head office located at the capital city of Islamabad. The GSM operator has the country's largest voice and data network with more than 8,000 cell sites and a fiber optic network of 6,500 kms covering more than 10,000 cities and towns.

Along with this, the operator has partnered with 300 operators worldwide for providing international roaming in over 140 countries and has recently collaborated with Air France and Emirates to offer in-flight communication service for its customers providing not only voice calls and text messages but also data over GPRS.

Mobilink also provides BlackBerry services in the country and has launched the country's first mobile app store recently by the name Jazz Bananas.

Warid Telecom, the other operator, holds a subscriber base of 17 mn and is a joint venture between Abu Dhabi group and Singtel group with Singapore Telecom (Singtel) holding 30% share. The operator provides both pre-paid and post-paid cellular GSM services and its network covers a wide range of cities in the states of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Paktunkhwa, Balochistan, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).

The company provides plenty of value added services like DUA service, SMS blocker, music club, fantasy cricket, etc, and offers business solutions like corporate RBT, with which organizations can activate their custom-made ringtones, serving as an advertisement for the firm and its products.

The operator provides international roaming to its subscribers and its infotainment service provides access to services including religion, sports, news, entertainment, and lifestyle by just sending an SMS.

Telenor Pakistan began its commercial operations in 2005 and has its headquarter in Islamabad with regional offices in Karachi and Lahore.

The operator has a subscriber base of 26.7 mn as of June 2011, making it the second largest cellular operator in the nation.

The total coverage area of the operators covers more than 3,000 cities, towns, and highways throughout Pakistan making it the second largest network in the country and in October 2010, the company initiated VSAT project to provide coverage via satellite to remote areas where conventional transmission media cannot be implemented.

The operator is a subsidiary of Telenor Norway and its international roaming network covers over 170 destinations and boasts of providing the largest GPRS service at over numerous destinations in the country.

China Mobile Pakistan, also known as Zong, is a 100% subsidiary of China Mobile and has a subscriber base of 11 mn as of June 2011. The company has invested massively in the telecom sector of Pakistan and its network covers a wide range of areas of the country providing its services in both pre- and post-paid format.

Zong even provides plenty of value added services like Zong insurance,
Zong mobile newspaper, and Zong
mega challenge.

Pakistan Telecommunication Company started its operations in January 2001 under the brand name Ufone and now it is a part of the Emirates Telecommunication Corporation Group (Etisalat). The operator has built a subscriber base of over 20 mn in less than a decade. The company has a network coverage in 10,000 locations and across all major highways of Pakistan. Ufone also offers country's largest GPRS and BlackBerry roaming coverage in more than 160 countries.

Fixed/Broadband

On the fixed front, the country has a telecom density of 1.9% as of June 2011, which is quite low compared to the gigantic number of cellular subscribers with the country owned PTCL, which has the maximum share of subscribers.

The nation has 6 major operators in the fixed segment including PTCL, NTC, BrainTel, WorldCall, Union Communication, and NayaTel.

Pakistan Telecommunications Company (PTCL) is the largest telecommunications company of the country with the government controlling 62% of the shares and the remaining shares are held by Etisalat and the general public of
the country.

The operator is the country's biggest fixed phone service provider and boasts of the largest copper infrastructure with more than 3 mn working PSTN lines and a fiber optic network of 10,400 km connecting over 840 cities and towns with 270G bandwidth.

The company maintains a leading position in the country as an infrastructure provider to other telecom operators and corporate customers of the country and is expanding its capacity of submarine cables on the long distance and international infrastructure front to meet
the increasing demand of the international traffic.

National Telecommunication Corporation started its operations in 1996 with 5 local exchanges all over the country and focused primarily on developing its own basic infrastructure in the initial years. It has provided more than 105,000 working connections of telephone to its government subscribers in the country.

The company has its regional offices in Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore, Multan, Quetta, and Karachi and provides fixedline services like calling card, basic rate interface (BRI), supplementary services, etc.

NTC is also planning to provide value added services like caller line identification, call waiting, call transfer, switched hotline, etc, in the near future.

BrainTel, established in 1982, provides internet telecommunication services. The operators' product line includes IP phones, softphones, and tele adapters.
The services provided by the company includes call transfer, call waiting, caller ID, 3-way calling, call bridging, call conferencing, voice mail, etc.

The operator is currently providing its services in Lahore only.

WorldCall Telecom is a part of Oman Telecommunications Company and launched its operations in 1996 with payphone operations.

The company provides wireless phone services in more than 50 cities of the nation on CDMA 1x network.

NayaTel is a part of the broadband operator, Micronet broadband, and provides services including fixedline telephony, ISDN PRI, IP telephony, and virtual PABX.

The total number of broadband subscribers stands at 1.3 mn as of May 2011 in the country with the majority of users using the DSL technology followed by WiMax.

The country has 4 major broadband service providers, PTCL, LINKdotNET, Wateen, and NTC.

PTCL is the largest broadband service provider in the nation with about 668,736 subscribers in over 605 cities and is the first operator in the world to commercially launch EV-DO Rev B products offering speeds upto 9.3 Mbps.

The operator even provides free dial-up service and access to movies, dramas, cricket matches, educational, and religious content to its broadband customers.

LINKdotNET in 2007 successfully acquired and merged WOL Telecom and Dancom online to provide internet and data solutions in the nation.

The company's product line includes business DSL, domain hosting, dial-up services, data network and VPNs, ISDN, and dedicated IP internet access.

The operators' network is divided into 3 regions-South, Central, and North and covers more than 500 cities and territories.

The southern region covers the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan and all major cities in these regions are connected to the regional hub at Karachi via high-speed digital links while the central region has Lahore as its hub and covers 80% of the province of Punjab.

The northern region has Islamabad as its hub and covers the remaining 20% of the province of Punjab, the entire province of NWFP, and northern areas.

Wateen Telecom is the latest venture of Abu Dhabi Group in the country and was the first telecom company to roll out a WiMax network in the country on a wide scale. The operator's VSAT specializes in VSAT products and solutions.

The company provides WiMax, cable, and DSL broadband services and claims to provide a speed of 2 Mbps.

The company's partner list consists of reputed organizations like Motorola, Cisco, and Intel for delivering of its services.

At present, the coverage of the operator lies in 22 cities and in order to meet the growing demands for high bandwidth connectivity, the company is even deploying Metro OFC network in major cities of the country covering 17 major cities of the nation with optical fiber cable of more than 1,000 kms.

The objective of National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) is to have an infrastructure independent of all other operators that can be used for the purpose of the government communication and to provide alternative support to the operators entering the market.

The operator provides ADSL and ISDN services in the broadband segment offering high speeds to the government organizations and corporate offices.

The company even provides intranet solutions to corporates using broadband network and technologies like DXX, DSL, and ATM. The 2 intranet solutions provided by the company are G.SHDSL and DXX.

NTC has even deployed a scalable network along with providing the hardware to provide an efficient tele-presence solution in order to make communication between top federal and provincial government officials more effective and close.

The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has laid strict norms for the operators in its telecommunication installer regulations 2011, as per which all licensed fixed phone operators have to obtain a ATI-NOC. The operators shall maintain all NTP termination and installation records for the duration of the service.

The regulations even remarks that the operators will follow all the international standards while providing services to
the customers.

Pakistan, though having reflected a dip in the growth rate compared to 2008, is growing at a satisfactory rate. With the new technologies being implemented by the operators and the encouraging subscriber growth, it seems that the teledensity of the country is all set to reach dizzy heights in the near future.