While during early nineties most of the decision makers were evaluating their options among ICT and other potential solutions, today it is impossible to imagine life without ICTs.
From television to mobile phones and the Internet, ICTs have reshaped the world and offer enormous potential to improve productivity, foster sustainable development, empower people including women and youth, reduce poverty, build capacity and skills, assist individuals and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), reinforce popular participation and informed decision making at all levels.
The World Telecom & Information Society Day Theme for 2010 "Better cities, better life with ICTs" focuses on the role of Information and Communication Technologies in social and economic development of cites. The 21st century is a century of global urbanisation and cities being the hub of economic development are playing an increasingly important role in countries and regions. Acting as catalysts for a more productive and better life, ICT offers innovative solution for our cities in an increasingly converged information society.
The Information and Communication Technologies in Pakistan have grown at a tremendous pace during the last decade. Not very long ago mobile phone used to be a status symbol, but today the teledensity which was mere 6.25 in 2003-04 today stands at 62. The sector has attracted over 10 Billion US $ foreign direct investment during the last eight years. If we correlate the Pakistan's ICT and GDP growth, it becomes apparent that GDP growth was extremely high during the era of exponential growth in the ICT market and most of this GDP growth came through the ICT driven service sectors including telecommunication and banking.
ICTs today are an important pillar of the growth and development of our major cities. The last few years witnessed a gradual shift from an agricultural economy to a more service based economy. This influx of people towards main cities would not have been manageable without ICTs. Today because of ICT we have innovative solutions for traffic management, power distribution, health care, education systems, security, e-commerce and e-governance. People today are aware of important developments on both domestic and international fronts and are in a better position to take informed decisions. They can communicate, buy, sell and trade with the entire world; express themselves, make their voices heard and exercise their right to demand accountability from those who are supposed to serve them.
Most of the ICT growth unfortunately has been restricted to a few major big cities 50% of our population lives in villages and rural areas. Thousands of small cities across the country even today not have access to basic means of communication and information that are taken for granted by people living in urban centers. Thus we witness huge disparities in the life style and quality of living in our major urban cities verses small towns and rural areas.
It is the collective responsibility of the government of Pakistan as well as the Pakistan Telecom Industry to bridge the enormous digital divide that exists within our urban centers as well as the urban and rural areas. PTCL being the industry leader and a socially responsible citizen is cognisant of its responsibilities and has developed its roadmap for bridging this digital divide.
Today at PTCL, we take pride in being the market leader in fixed telecom sector in Pakistan. Our network infrastructure is available nation-wide connecting very small villages, towns and cities together. We have acquired half a million DSL subscribers in just two and half years. Our Evo wireless broadband subscriber base is seventy thousand within one year of commercial launch. While most of the broadband services providers have restricted their operations to few big cities we take pride in the fast PTCL DSL broadband services are available in over 1000 towns and cities nation-wide.
PTCL in collaboration with Universal Service Fund (USF) of Government of Pakistan have provided broadband services in the remote towns and cities at highly subsidised tariffs. We have continuously been investing in latest ICT technologies and have launched several innovative products and services during the last few years. PTCL Tele-presence, Audio and Video Conference Call, i-Sentry and Data Centers are few of the latest services that ensure seamless business connectivity to our corporate business partners.
Being the industry leader and a socially responsible corporate citizen we are cognisant of our responsibilities. The company has the resolve to spread the benefits of ICT growth to the remote and underserved areas of the country and we enjoy complete support and co-operation from Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom in this challenging task.