Pakistan has emerged as a lucrative market for broadband service providers owing to the huge potential it offers, especially in wireless broadband market. Pakistan is among the five dynamic economies of Asia in terms of increased penetration of mobile phones, Internet and broadband, said Muhammad Yaseen, chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
He was addressing the 4th annual Pakistan Telecommuni-cation Conference (TeleCON 2011) organised by PTA in collaboration with Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) here on Tuesday. The conference recommended that it was time for Pakistan to deploy eco-sustainable technologies to enhance communication to usher robust economic growth.
"We observed a profound evolution of broadband technologies over the years with the present subscription base reaching 1.2 million from 0.1 million in 2007," said PTA chairman, adding that broadband is considered as the next big thing to offer a unifying services platform for three converging industrial sectors: computing, communications and broadcasting. He further said that there was deliberation on potential new technologies and economic challenges, which would bring substantial revenues and creating remarkable job opportunities in the country.
Experts on the occasion demanded deployment of eco-sustainable mobile technologies. Telecom sector in Pakistan is confronted with many challenges including highest tax ratio, energy crises and petroleum prices. There is dire need of friendly business policy to steer the industry out of the prevailing crises, said Wahaj-us-Siraj chief executive officer Naya Tel.
He further said that telecom sector pay 19.5 percent Special Excise Duty (SED) against the standard 16 percent SED for other sectors. Similarly, in the new presidential ordinance, withholding tax has been raised from 10 to 11.5 percent, which is fun with the costumers, as they do not claim refund for the tax.
Menin Rodrigues chairman of TeleCON 2011, President and CEO Shamrock Communications (Pvt) Limited said that a powerful telecommunications infrastructure had proved to be the key for robust growth in many countries during recent times. Over the past two decades, Pakistan has been very proactive in deploying modern technology in this arena; however the quest of delivering the next-generation of cellular services has become a complex debate for the industry, he added.
Adil Rauf, CEO Alcatel-Lucent Technologies said that a radical and sustainable approach was needed to meet the eco-sustainability challenges and announced the company's ground-breaking mobile technology called 'Light-Radio' a simpler, greener, lighter network that saves infrastructure and energy.
Arif Hussain, chief operating officer of Multinet Pakistan, said that considerations for technology, economics and opportunities must be the key element in drawing a clearer roadmap for the future of mobile technologies in Pakistan. While technologies were getting bigger, better, cheaper and faster, the investment and stability of platform were an equally important factor, he added. Dr Tanveer-ul-Haq, Chief Technical Officer of Wi-Tribe and Saad Muzaffar Waraich, Country Manager, Nokia-Siemens Network said that the real need today was to have access to faster and reliable broadband as consumers were more inclined to video-downloading rather than data sourcing. Both were of the opinion that deployment of 3-G technology in Pakistan was long overdue and should be a priority on the government's agenda.
Usman Tariq of Systems Limited said the key areas of mobile applications, which included customized packages, mobile games, mobile websites and web-applications, business and marketing applications were some of the development areas, which need to focus on. Citing the example of the success of mobile banking in Pakistan, Usman said that companies with the best breed of software technologies and business process outsourcing solutions were in a better position to progress in the mobile applications arena.
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