As a result of effective implementation of deregulation policy by the government, the mobile phone sector has shown 110 percent overall growth over the last 10 months, whereas the number of cell phone subscribers is increasing by 9 percent per month.
The figures available with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) show that there are currently more than 10.5 million mobile phone subscribers, whereby mobile phone penetration is 6.95 percent and every month approximately 500,000 subscribers joined the consumer base.
According to the figures, presently, Mobilink is leading the market with 6.45 million subscribers, while Ufone has 2.2 million users. Instaphone has 543,681 customers and Paktel has 323,572 and 448,342 subscribers on its AMPS and GSM networks, respectively.
The recently launched Norwegian telecom operator Telenor has attracted 250,000 consumers so far.
As far as tariff of mobile phone is concerned, it has shown a steep decrease of 50 percent over the last one-year and the prices are further coming down as the PTA is making efforts towards healthy competition. There was only 0.3 million cell phone subscribers in 2000.
The subscriber base touched 3.4 million by the end of 2003 owing to Cellular Party Pays (CPP) regime and entrance of a new cellular operator Ufone, a subsidiary of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL).
In 2003 the Cellular Mobile Policy was announced which gave a fresh impetus to this sector.
The subscriber base touched the mark of 5 million in June 2004 and from June to December 2004 the cellular sector witnessed 59 percent growth in the subscriber base with eight million subscribers.
The country receives huge foreign investment after PTA invites tenders to award two cellular phone licences followed by free and fair grant of GSM licences to Warid Telecom and Telenor.
This historic development in cellular sector has increased the government revenues in the form of general sales tax (GST) and central excise duty (CED).
The government has collected Rs 15.6 billion during July 2004 to April 2005 from the telecom sector in the shape of aforementioned taxes, whereas the share of mobile sector in overall GST was Rs 7.7 billion during the same period.
The coverage area comparison of various cellular operators reveals that Mobilink is present in more than 300 cities, Ufone in 127 cities, whereas Paktel and Instaphone have 186 cities on their service list across the country.
Mobilink tops in the market share among all the operators with 62.84 percent share followed by Ufone with 23.11 percent, while Paktel and Instaphone have 7.33 percent and 6.73 percent market share, respectively.
According to the PTA projections, there would be over 15 million cellular subscribers by the end of December 2005.
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