With the Planning Commission estimating that one million youth would be entering the work force every year till 2040, the government has no planning of how to provide employment to the young population comprising almost 50 per cent of the total that according to official estimates is under 25 years of age. According to the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) country’s teledensity has increased to 68.6 percent. The total mobile subscribers have reached a record level of 111.1 million at end October 2011, up from 109.6 million subscribers on June 30, 2011.
The telecom revolution in Pakistan started with the deregulation of telecom sector in 2001. The number of subscribers jumped from mere 300,000 to over 1 million within one year. Introduction of calling party pays regime acted as a catalyst to add up to 1 million subscribers every month in subsequent months. Cut throat competition in the market resulted in Pakistan having the lowest average revenue per user (ARPU) in the world. However, despite a record increase in voice segment the data connectivity has failed to take off in the country that could promote impetus to other sectors. Mobilink remains the market leader with 33.5 million customers, followed by Telenor with 27.6 million. Ufone 20.8 million, Warid 15.9 million, and Zong showed the most promising growth with 13.1 million customers. However the figures for broadband connectivity were least impressive as the country has only 1.6 million subscribers at end September. The wireless technologies have helped increase the base but still overall the market remains at a nascent stage. Wimax has over 478,000 customers while EVDO has almost 404,000 customers, while the landline based DSL service has over 730,000 subscribers.
These mobile companies have large customer base as compared to any other entity in the country. However, they have failed to tap the huge number of customers to other productive use. The experiment of mobile banking in Pakistan has proved very successful, as the penetration of conventional banking remains low in the country. But no company has attempted to opt for tailor made solutions for the agriculture, education or healthcare sector. Chairman PTA Dr Mohammed Yasin is of the opinion that Pakistan has emerged as one of the leading markets in telecom sector especially in the voice segment but the mushrooming of data connectivity has not taken off due to the non availability of local content and applications. Since the local telecom operators have failed to develop local content and applications, PTA has entered the field by launching an online portal.
There is huge potential for local content and applications for education, health, governance and banking. The government has failed to come up with some innovative approach to push broadband penetration in the country; even though experts have proposed subsidising projects in main cities from the Rs80 billion Universal Service Fund. The government on the other hand thinks that the upcoming auction of technology neutral licenses for 3G or for other emerging technologies would be helpful.
Success of telecom sector in Pakistan is seen as model for transformation and growth even by the entities of other sectors. Nearly all the Power distribution companies (DISCOs) want to implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to improve their planning and decision making. They think the adoption of technology could help them overcome many of their woes and look towards telcos to provide answers through ICT. The future for these telcos lies in converting to complete solution providers instead of being mere service providers.