Growth of Pakistan’s telecom sector witness dramatic increase

ISLAMABAD: Telecom industry has seen a dramatic increase during the last four years as irs revenue reached $ 15.35 billion during July 2013 to June 2017.

The growth rate of Pakistan’s telecommunication sector has been impressively fast-paced and contributed a lot in bringing Mobile Broadband services – 3G, 4G, LTE, to the country and has contributed $ 4.42 billion to National exchequer during July 2014 to June 2017.

According to a statistical report July 2018 by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the number of 3G/4G subscribers in the country has crossed 57 million.

Meanwhile, the number of mobile phone users have increased to 151 million till July 2018. Member Information Technology at Ministry of IT and Telecommunication, Mudassir Hussain said, Pakistan, having more than 58 million fixed and mobile broadband users, is providing affordable and quality internet services as compared to other regional countries and it is the competition due to which broadband rate in Pakistan is also far more affordable than the other countries.

He told APP that for Pakistan, recognizing ICT as an industry has been very recent but our IT and Telecom sector is moving on fast pace and all these things really matter in decision making of global players to set up their presence here and that will help in generating revenue.

The ministry official told APP to promote telecom industry in 2014, 3G licenses were awarded to Jazz, Telenor, Ufone, and Zong while the last one was also given the license of the 4G service.

Later on, in 2016, Telenor received the 4G license and after that Jazz was awarded the same license in 2017.

He said, Mobile broadband users remain significantly higher than fixed broadband user to the dominance of the mobile platform in the country.

Statistics issued by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) have showed that number of mobile phone users reached 151 million by July 2018, as compared to 145.99 million by end of January 2018.

Mobilink Jazz's total count for 3G users stood at 15.03 million by July 2018, as compared to 14.54 million by January 2018. Jazz 4G user numbers jumped from 2.23 by January 2018 to 4.6 million by July 2018.

Zong 3G subscribers decreased to 9.22 million by July 2018, from 9.08 million in January 2018, while number of 4G users jumped from 5.07 million by January end to 7.76 million by June 2018.

The number of 3G users of Telenor increased from 10.75 million in January 2018 to 10.31 million by July 2018. The number of 4G users jumped from 1.88 million in January 2018 to 3.3 million by July 2018.

Ufone total subscriber reached to 7.06 by end of July 2018 as they were 6.630 million in January 2018.