The Cellular industry of Pakistan has matured into a competitive and progressive market and currently there are 104 million subscribers in Pakistan as of the end of January 2011 as compared to 99.2 million at the end of June 2010. It shows a net increase of 4.8 million subscribers over the last seven months. Almost all of the cellular mobile operators have contributed in this subscriber addition and managed to maintain a positive growth trend during the last two quarters.
According to official data available, Mobilink has reached 32.1 million subscribers followed by Telenor with 25.1 million cellular subscribers. Ufone performed well during the last four quarters and managed to increase its subscribers base to 20.4 million whereas Warid has 17.6 million subscribers and Zong holds its figure at 8.9 million as of January 2011.
Cellular revenues stood at Rs126.5 billion during the first two quarters (July-Dec 10) of FY 2010-11 as compared to Rs122.6 billion for the last two quarters of FY 2009-10. According to official figures issued by Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA), revenues have been on the rise since the start of year 2010. However, there was a dip in the quarter of Jul-Sep 2010 due to huge loss in revenue reported by Mobilink and Telenor.
Telecom sector is now moving towards maturity and saturation is being experienced in metropolitan cities. Although in FY 2010, the investment situation was not alarming, however, investment figures for first two quarters of FY 2010-11 are not very encouraging. A total of $270 million have been invested during Jul-Dec 2010 in the telecom sector in Pakistan which is 36 percent less than the investment made in the first six months of 2010 which stands at $423 million.
