Summary Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has released annual report 2015.
ISLAMABAD (Web Desk) - According to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority‘s annual report 2015, total outgoing national cellular traffic increased to 393.5 billion minutes at the end of FY 2014-15 as compared to 345.7 billion minutes in FY 2013-14 while 393.1 billion SMS were exchanged over cellular networks during FY2014-15.
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) regulates the telecommunication sector of Pakistan with a reconciliatory approach, seeking balance between protecting consumer rights and legitimate business interests of the operators.
PTA performed its role in the ‘National Action Plan’ to counter terrorism by planning, implementing and monitoring the project of biometric re-verification of SIMs. A total of 215.4 million SIMs were re-verified under this drive, out of which 114.9 million SIMs against 44.7 million unique Computerized National Identity Cards (CNICs) were identified to have correct antecedents, while 98.3 million SIMs (including 26.7 million active SIMs) were blocked because their antecedents were not available, were incorrect or could not be verified.
The biometric re-verification drive has affected the overall telecom statistics as more than 26 million active SIMs were blocked as a result of this activity. Therefore, teledensity of the country dropped to 61.8% at the end of FY 2014-15 as compared to 79.6% last year i.e. 20% decline.
Telecom revenues for the FY 2014-15 are estimated to be Rs. 449 billion while the telecom sector contribution to National Exchequer amounted to Rs. 126.26 billion.
Telecom investment reached US$ 951 million during FY2014-15 while FDI inflow remained US$ 908 million as operators continued investment in extending the coverage of 3G and 4G services across Pakistan.
With the rapid expansion of mobile broadband networks and adoption of smartphones in the society, the telecom import burden has gradually increased over the last five years. In the FY 2014-15, Pakistan imported US$ 1.2 billion worth of telecom equipment, in which a record import of US$ 629.9 million was on account of cellular mobile handsets imports.
Currently, almost 31% of the cellular mobile handsets imported in Pakistan are smartphones, which were only about 7% in 2012.
In order to tap the potential of over US$ 1.2 billion market of telecom equipment (including handsets) in Pakistan, Govt. is encouraging foreign investment in this area and has announced fiscal incentives for manufacturing and assembly of telecom equipment as mentioned in the previous section.
In the cellular mobile sector, re-verification of SIMs brought the penetration down to 60.7% with 114.7 million subscribers at the end of June 2015 as compared to 139.9 million subscribers at the end of corresponding period last year. Mobilink leads the subscriber shares with 29.2% followed by Telenor (27.5%), Zong (19.3%), Ufone (15.5%) and Warid (8.6%). Cellular cells sites have increased to 40,704 covering more than 92% of the land area of Pakistan.
Broadband sector is experiencing a true revolution since the introduction of mobile broadband.
Broadband penetration rose to 8.97% at the end of FY 2014-15 as compared to just 2.07% in the previous year. Subscriber base took a huge jump of 345% to reach 16.89 million at the end of FY2015. The whole sector dynamics have drastically changed as the broadband market leaders in terms of subscriber shares are now Telenor (24.7%), Mobilink (21.7%), CMPak (17.8%) and PTCL (15.8%). Mobile broadband has complete dominance on the broadband technology share as almost 80% subscribers are using 3G and 4G LTE services to access the internet.
Mobile broadband will be clearly the main driving force behind broadband statistics as the data consumed over mobile broadband networks in June, 2015 (9,860 TBs1) was six times more than the data usage over cellular networks in June, 2014.
In lieu of the IMEI blocking facility for stolen/lost handsets, PTA blocked 108,031 cellular mobiles as reported by the consumers during the FY 2014-15 while 3,962 sets have been unblocked.
