Chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority Dr. Mohammed Yaseen has proposed to the government that Rs80 billion funds generated under the Universal Service Fund (USF) should be utilised for broadband proliferation by declaring the whole country under-served in internet usage.
Addressing a seminar on “What’s ahead in telecommunication for Pakistan”, Chairman PTA said the proliferation of broadband in the country remains low with only 1.4 million subscribers even though there are 109 million mobile phone users in the country. This step would allow massive development of broadband services in the urban areas. USF is generated through the profit earned by the telecom companies and is utilised for deploying telecom infrastructure in the under-served areas. To date the government has processed projects worth only Rs17 billion for under served areas. Chairman PTA noted that the content and applications were driving the ICT industry and telecom sector was becoming more of a platform for these services. He said that the cellular companies could be big losers if they did not change their business plans and focused on providing more value added services through content and applications. He observed that their revenue from phone calls would drastically reduce in the coming years as already they were advertising long distance calls to United States for as low as Rs10 per 30 minutes. He said 10 to 15 million smart phones were connected to local telecom networks that could be used for mobile banking, commerce and other value added services.
He said the frequency harmonisation is extremely important to achieve benefits of rapid development in wireless technologies, making it imperative for administrations to allow changes in frequency assignments for the greater good. Several countries have formulated a spectrum of re-framing policy framework and to promote wireless broadband dissemination in rural areas. He said new solutions could create new revenue streams for companies. In his key note address, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of China Mobile Pakistan (CMPak) Fan Yunjun said that the value of the ICT products was improving while that of telecom products was declining which was posing a challenge to enterprise development track, maintaining revenue streams and bringing internet to hand held devices. Quoting an example of IBM, he said the world’s leader in hardware was forced to switch to software and services consolidation to survive. He said more competition to telcos was coming from the internet and not from the telecom sector and it was essential that the focus should be on new value added services like media and entertainment. He said broadband penetration was low in Pakistan but there was a huge potential for mobile internet but the challenge was to maintain network at low costs. He said that the telcos need to focus on providing cloud computing, sharing of resources, information and software, to small and medium enterprises.
CEO of Wateen Telecom Naeem Zamindar said that his company has 42 MHz frequency and that they were planning to boost the use of applications in the country. He said valued added services were contributing 70 per cent revenue of Japanese telcos in 2010 as compared to 10 percent in 2003. He said broadband growth was imminent in Pakistan, as devices for using internet would be available as cheap as $100 by the end of next year. He said that their board was likely to approve online payment mechanism that would allow them to re-launch their service in next couple of months with better customer services and suited for new business models. According to him there are 2 million SMEs in Pakistan and cloud computing can serve as a potential area for providing SMEs with innovative services. Chief Idea Officer of Ideogency Adnan Shahid said that Pakistani’s send 151 billion SMS per annum which helped generate Rs40 billion to the telcos. On average every Pakistani consumer was sending 128 SMS per month. The seminar was also addressed by CEO Alcatel-Lucent Pakistan Aadil Rauf, MD PSEB Zia Imran, Deputy CEO Huawei Pakistan Wilson Wang, Head of Customer Team Nokia Siemens Networks Faisal Ansari, and Director Corporate Communications Telenor Anjum Nida Rehman.
